FISH ON FRIDAY: The Tuna Casserole Project

This tuna casserole recipe makes use of one of my favorite small kitchen appliances: the slow-cooker. I read the recipe, bewildered, wondering what it was about tuna casserole that would need four to six hours to cook. I mean, noodles? Maybe eleven minutes in boiling water. The peas, even frozen ones, cook by themselves while the casserole is in the oven. The tuna itself is already cooked -- I got a sudden mental image of a Midwestern housewife cramming an entire raw tuna, head, fins and all, into her Crock Pot -- and couldn't come up with anything. And then, a moment of revelation: The purpose of cooking a tuna casserole in a slow-cooker is twofold:

1) To make absolutely, positively CERTAIN WITHOUT A SHADOW OF DOUBT that all ingredients have reached their maximum level of gluey gloppiness so that each individual helping separates itself from the serving spoon with a sticky sound and lands with a sound that falls somewhere between a *thwack!* and a *thmp* on the plate, and;

2) To make your house smell, like, REALLY, REALLY GOOD. I mean, awesome, with that canned tuna fishy smell permeating every porous surface. Mmmmm....