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Sunday, July 13, 2014

The ubiquitous onion soup dip and other retro foods

My daughter had a potluck gathering last night, and I love being included in this group of forty-year-olds (though Jordan will huffily remind me that she's not forty yet!). Being lazy, my contribution was potato chips with onion soup dip. People deride it as passé, so sixties, trite, etc. but they consume every bit of it. I actually serve it fairly often, It's so easy to make. One of Jordan's friends and I actually had a whole conversation about the whole onion soup thing.
Several years ago friends and I decided to have a retro potluck dinner--we'd serve the foods of the sixties that we remembered from growing up.
I announced I would make tuna noodle casserole, and one friend asked, "Do I really have to eat it?" I assured her mine is good...and it is. Another friend made orange Jello salad with carrots and pineapple in it--remember that? And we had two batches of onion soup dip--one made with no-fat sour cream, which we pronounced a crashing failure. This was back before we realized that if the manufacturers took the fat out, they put in something to substitute, probably worse. I always buy whole sour cream, cottage cheese, and cream cheese, rarely buy anything low fat. Just eat less!
Back to the successful batch of onion soup dip--one man was so taken with it, he said to his wife, "This is delicious. Can you get the recipe?" She smiled smugly and said, "I think I can handle it."
Here's my tuna casserole recipe, which I really like (I also used to use it for leftover turkey):

One cup white wine
Handful of herbs--thyme, rosemary, tarragon, oregano, black pepper, savory, parsley, whatever strikes  your fancy, though I'd leave out cumin, chile powder and related spices
Egg noodles - maybe 5 oz. or so
1 7-oz. can chunk albacore tuna
1 can cream of mushroom soup--not low fat
Vegetable of choice--I like frozen green peas; use however much you want
Dash of Worcestershire
Salt and pepper to taste
Pinch of dry mustard if you want
French fried onion rings or other crispy topping of your preference--buttered Ritz cracker crumbs are also good (nobody said this is a weight watchers' recipe)

Boil wine and herbs hard until mixture turns black. Remove from heat and set aside.

Boil some egg noodles. Drain and rinse.

Mix tuna, noodles, soup, wine mixture, vegetable and seasonings. Top with topping of choice and bake until casserole is bubbly and topping is brown. 350 for about 25-30 minutes. Honest, it's good! But then, I like almost anything tuna.

As for onion soup dip
1 envelope original onion soup mix
2 cups (16 oz. container) sour cream--not lowfat or no fat
1 bag sturdy waffle potato chips

Mix soup seasonings and sour cream and chill in a bowl. Put chips in a separate bowl. Serve--and sit back and  laugh.

Note I wanted to post a cute picture of myself and my hostess-daughter from last night, but I can't get it out of regular email and into my photo file. Hence the picture of the onion soup box. Eye-catching, isn't it?

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