As in the soup, because I made my own cream of mushroom– for a very specific purpose. This week I had my first tuna-noodle casserole. I did not grow up with casseroles. My dad never liked a one-pot meal, and my mom didn’t really care, so I had a childhood free of Durkee French Fried Onions. Frankly, I never liked tuna fish from a can until I was in college, so a tuna casserole was not in my culinary lexicon.

But recently my mother started making them for herself . Maybe she was finally feeling that empty-nest syndrome, or maybe she was hearkening back to her own childhood in the 1950s, filled with tuna-noodle casseroles. Either way she started to rave about them. At first I was appalled; this casserole always sounded like a train wreck to me. But then, as I started thinking about it, and alterations that I would make– tuna-noodle casserole came up in my estimation. So much so, that I had to make one for myself.

Here is what I did:

I sliced and chopped from fresh button mushrooms and sautéed them with an onion. I then made a velouté sauce in the same pan as the mushrooms. You can read about making this sauce here. I threw in a few branches of thyme, and let sauce simmer for a bit.

I cooked about 8 ounces of egg noodles part-way, draining and rinsing them. I also drained two cans of tuna. (If you must know, one of them was in olive oil.)

I then added the noodles and the tuna into the sauce, with the zest and the juice of Meyer lemon. A few handfuls of frozen peas were added. Mixing well, the whole mess went into a casserole dish.

Freshly-made bread crumbs were sprinkled on the top, and the casserole was baked until bubbly, about 25 minutes at 375 degrees.

And you know what, it was delicious: comforting, warming, creamy. I get it. Granted, this might not be the tuna-noodle that my mom makes, but at my house, it was pretty darn good.