Pimentos for dinner

From My mother’s cooking blog ( http://www.renascookbook.blogspot.com/)

My mother was not known for her cooking, and often made fun of her own dishes. We used to joke about her cooking. For many years, we all lived together in the same house on Walcott Avenue; my Mother, my Father and my Grandparents. “Bubbe" did most of the cooking, especially at holiday time. But with her passing in 1967, and my Father's in 1970, my mother became the cook for herself and her father until his passing in 1976. After that, living alone, we often spoke of cooking, new ideas, and new ways to prepare old dishes. Most of the recipes she used reflect another time, where canned foods were the basis of food preparation, not today's lighter, fresher ingredients.

One of her favorite dishes was creamed tuna; a dish she felt could be a very fancy lunch or a hearty dinner. She loved to add ingredients such as hard cooked eggs, pimentos, mushrooms (canned) etc. She would consider toast points, patty shells or rice as suitable containers for her creamed tuna.

The first thing you have to realize was she used Campbell’s Cram of Mushroom Soup as a base. She used Minute Rice as a bottom and canned mushrooms, “stems and pieces” to save the money, and as an addition.

My mother was my second cooking teacher, as thankfully, my grandmother was my first. However, I spent years making tuna casseroles for my older kids, and added everything you could imagine. I even strayed from the Cream of Mushroom soup and used fresh ingredients like celery, onions and fresh mushrooms. I have grown dramatically as a cook since those days.

The story I remember most was my mother telling me she was making me a special lunch, creamed tuna over rice with pimentos. This pimento was to be a large, red pepper in oil (I think) and was jarred or canned. I only know, when it was presented to me as an idea, I had no idea what it would be, but it sounded pretty good and I had no basis to judge. She prepared the lunch and called me to the table.

I had never had a pimento and had no idea how much one would be included in a dish, and clearly, either had my mother. She figured, she had bought a jar full and had no other earthly use for the things, so my portion of lunch, with a Minute Rice bottom, included an entire jar of pimentos, covering the entire dish, in a beautiful pattern coming out from the top like sparkly red leaves.

I tried to like them, and would have enjoyed one cut up in small pieces and spread throughout the dish, but the whole thing covering the top was just too much!

My mother was disappointed that I didn’t like them, whereas I tried to explain that there were perhaps too many of them for me, but the creamed tuna was good, even with the added frozen peas and corn mixed throughout the dish, the way the pimentos should have been.

It was a beautiful, colorful, difficult to swallow meal, but it lives on in infamy!