Carbanoodle Casserole

For dinner, I had an assortment of Japanese food- ikura and sea bass sushi, philly rolls, gyoza, an "S&M roll" and a tiger eye maki roll, followed by some tapioca pudding at home. Everything was good, except for the tiger eye roll. The jalapeno was a nice touch, but the outside was very doughy and bland.

More interesting, however, is what I cooked for Thanksgiving. My contribution to the meal is a recipe from my MIL she's been cooking for years and years. I think it came from a 1970s cookbook, back when casseroles were still cool without being retro, and simple starches were in. I have fondly dubbed it the Carbanoodle Casserole, due to the preponderance of carbs. Did I mention the recipe requires a half-pound of butter?

The first thing to note is that I wanted to grocery shop for ingredients yesterday while I was getting dinner at Whole Foods, but I couldn't. I wandered around the store for a few minutes in a confused daze, before I realized that WF does not sell most of the required ingredients. In fact, they're things I'd be a little embarrassed to buy, if I didn't know how amazingly tasty the end product is. Like Minute Rice. Imagine my surprise when I actually DID make it to another grocery store tonight, only to see people agonizing over what kind of Minute Rice to buy for Thanksgiving...

Basically, you melt half a pound of butter in a large pot, add a half pound of fine egg noodles, and brown them. Then you add two cups of Minute Rice, just under 22 oz. of canned onion soup (no, not the good stuff), 22oz. of chicken broth, a cup of water, some soy sauce, some canned water chestnuts, and two jars of canned, sliced mushrooms. Mix well, dump into a 3qt. casserole, cover, and bake at 350 until the liquid is mostly absorbed, 30-45 min. Sorry my camera batteries are dead, this mess looks so bland yet icky I'd really love to share step-by-step photos.

The first time I saw the recipe, I was seriously confused at the canned carby asian fusion weirdness of it, but it's addictive. The leftovers are even better, if there are any. If I have time after finals, I plan on trying to recreate the casserole in a slightly healthier incarnation- whole wheat noodles, brown rice, higher-quality onion soup. The butter's not going anywhere, but Minute Rice just scares me.