28. Tuna-Cheese-Macaroni-Loaf

I am a firm believer that the only thing that should come in loaf-form is bread. Even standard ol’ meatloaf is pushing it. It is a line that should never be crossed. Well, the monstrosity that is #28 Tuna-Cheese-Macaroni-Loaf looked at that culinary line, laughed at it, and then hurdled it like a thoroughbred in a steeplechase horse race.

There is so much wrong with this recipe, in addition to the fact that it has to be molded in a loaf pan.

1. Canned tuna. I do not like tuna. The only way I will eat it is as sashimi, or seared and very rare. Canned tuna is the worst of its ilk.

2. Evaporated milk. Why not regular milk? What makes it evaporated? Why is it a khaki color?

3. Process-type American Cheese. I have nothing against Velveeta, I like it on occasion. I just think it’s so weird that it specifies Process-type American Cheese. What’s wrong with unprocessed cheese, Dinner is Served!???

4. Sliced green olives. I like olives, but with the inclusion of said olives, we are veering into Olive Loaf territory, which is a very, very, scary place.

I can’t even give you a timeline for this meal. It was so involved and used so many pots and pans and I was thrown off by the previously mentioned ingredients. This is what my kitchen looked like after this meal:

Firstly, the cheese sauce. Now I can’t say anything bad about the cheese sauce. It’s melted Velveeta with a few add-ins. Yum. The thing was that you had to keep stirring the damn stuff before that pudding film started to appear. So Cleve stirred while I prepared everything else for the loaf. This, too, was involved. So much chopping and boiling and draining and mixing and buttering. I did all that the recipe asked of me. It all was mixed in a big bowl and then was shoved into the pan.

I think that this could be made palatable with the subtraction or the addition of a few items. For instance, putting canned chicken in there instead of canned tuna. But the name of this dish is TUNA-Cheese-Macaroni-Loaf not Fill in the blank-Cheese-Macaroni-Loaf.

So, into the oven the little loaf went.

Although this recipe doesn’t include any gelatin, it does involve trying to get something out of a mold. And Cleve and I are not good at that yet (see previous meals for ugly Jell-Os). Well, the loaf was quite stubborn. Here’s us trying to coax it out of the pan:

This is the result:

Doesn’t that look like the most appetizing thing ever? No. It’s not even in loaf form. FAIL. So with a spatula I tried to make it as loaf-shaped as I could. So here it is, my Tuna-Cheese-Macaroni-Loaf:

Looking at this photo again, the green olive garnish look like little eyeballs or barnacle mouths. It’s even more terrifying on film than in person, if you can believe that.

This was so bad in so many ways. I really couldn’t eat it. And to add insult to injury my version looks NOTHING like #28’s illustration.

One small victory: I did bake the date bars instead of buying them. But I made prune bars because I had prunes in the cupboard from the Fruit Stuffed Pork Loin.

Here is the recipe and here is how they turned out.

Like I said, the oat “date” bars were the only success. Cleve ate the loaf, but he picked out all the green olives (his canned tuna, I guess) and said he wouldn’t want to take the leftovers to work, so that means that I have garbage-ready loaf.

What’s worse is that there are two other cards requiring the use of canned tuna and one is just three variations on tuna salad. So you can all now look forward to #105. Yuck.