Canned tunafish is a great thing to have in your food storage. I always stock up when the price drops and I can frequently find it for $0.50 – $0.75 a can. It’s a great source of protein and most cans have a shelf life of up to 3 years.
When I was in college, one of my go-to recipes was tuna noodle casserole. It was cheap. It was easy. And even if it had a bad reputation is was tasty. My old recipe used cream of mushroom soup and I’ve since tried to cut canned creamed soups out of my diet because of all the additives that they have in them.
I’ve tried to add tuna into our diet from time to time but, despite the fact that my kids love fish, they’ve always been scared to death of tuna. You know how it is — they tell me they don’t like it even though they’ve never even tried a bite of it.
I had some cans of tuna I needed to use up so I figured that instead of eating it all as tuna sandwiches while I feed my kids an alternative lunch I would give tuna noodle casserole one more shot with my kids.
Thrive came out with a great new line of sauces that are all GMO free. Since I’m not using canned creamed soups I thought I’d give the Velouté Sauce a try as the base to my tuna noodle casserole.
I just followed the basic recipe for the sauce itself — boil 2 cups of water and slowly stir in 1/2 cup of sauce mix. The sauce has a rich chicken flavor that is delicious on it’s own. I had my kids try the sauce by itself and they were so impressed that they were willing to try the tuna noodle casserole. They wouldn’t make any promises that they would like it, but being willing to try it was a huge step in the right direction for us.
The end result was a tuna noodle casserole that was so creamy and delicious that my kids ate it without complaint and happily ate it as leftovers the next day. I made an entire casserole sized serving of this for under about $5 and it was enough for 2 meals for my family. This recipe can be made entirely from food storage but is so delicious that no one will notice.
Ingredients
- Thrive Velouté Sauce (1/2 cup of mix, 2 cups of water)
- 1/2 cup of Thrive Freeze Dried Corn
- 1/2 cup of Thrive Freeze Dried Peas
- 1 package of whole wheat egg noodles (or Thrive Egg Noodle Pasta)
- 2 cans of tuna
- 1 1/2 cups of cheddar cheese (or Thrive Freeze Dried Cheese)
Preparation
Cook the Velouté Sauce according to the directions on the can. (The back of the can also includes instructions for turning this sauce into creamy mushroom sauce and that would be delicious in this recipe too).
In a large pot, bring water to a boil and add in your egg noodles.
A few minutes before your noodles are done, add the freeze dried corn and peas. They’ll reconstitute as they cook with the noodles.
Drain your noodles and veggies.
Add the sauce and tuna to your noodle mixture. Mix well.
Pour the tuna mixture into a casserole pan and top with cheese.
Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes or until the cheese is melted.
This recipe is great reheated the next day and is a great way to save money on your food budget!
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