Monday, June 16, 2008

Frugal Foods - Canned Tuna Fish


Jenn over at Frugal Upstate is having a frugal food series where she highlights a frugal ingredient and than has people post all their best recipes using that ingredient. Last week was eggs and people suggested tons of great ideas including my suggestion of breakfast burritos. If you are looking for frugal foods to feed your family, stop by Frugal Upstate and check out all the great ideas. This week is canned tuna fish. We always have canned tuna in our food storage, we eat lots of tuna salad in the summer and my oldest daughter Jana could live on tuna sandwiches!

My mom used to make several things with canned tuna. We ate creamed tuna on toast (it sounds kind of weird but it is still comfort food for me when I'm grumpy and not feeling great). One of her favorites was Tuna Loaf. It is amazingly frugal and pretty easy to put together. We like it topped with a mushroom sauce (usually just cream of mushroom soup with a little milk and some cheese melted into it, but you could make a white sauce and add some sautéd mushrooms and some beef boullion with the cheese). We usually serve this with green beans because the mushroom sauce goes really well with the beans. Add some fruit and you have dinner! So without further ado, here it is:

Tuna Loaf

Mix together in a bowl:

1 can tuna, drained
2/3 c. soft bread crumbs (about 1-2 slices)
2 eggs
1/2 c. milk
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp paprika
1 Tbs. chopped celery
1 Tbs chopped parsley (or 1 tsp dried)
1 Tbs. chopped onion (or 1 tsp dried minced)

Mix these together well and place in a loaf pan. Dot the top with butter and place in 375 degree oven for 40 minutes.

Notes:
  • We always make a double batch of this and put it in a 9x9 square pan.
  • To make the soft bread crumbs, take a couple of slices of sandwich bread and cut it into small cubes. Or you can put it in the food processor to make actual crumbs out of it, I'm always too lazy to get out the food processor so I just cut.
  • You can use whole wheat bread (as we do) so that you make it even healthier.

3 comments:

Jenn @ Frugal Upstate said...

Thanks so much for linking to this for the "Frugal Food Series: Tuna".

I'm totally with you on the creamed tuna. The kiddos and hubby love it over rice.

I've done salmon loaf, but haven't tried any kind of tuna loaf yet. That will be on my to do list for the summer

Lynn said...

This looks good. I will have to try it. Thanks for sharing.

Lynn said...

When I stopped by your blog earlier I did not look around much. You stopped by my blog so I wanted to come look around yours a little. I grew up in the Portland area. My father in law used to work at Pacific. I actually grew up in Vernonia if you know where that is. I now live in the middle of the USA and miss OR a lot. I enjoy reading blogs from the NW. I will be coming back to read more. Thanks!