Storytime!
Once upon a time, when my parents were young (this had to be sometime in the 50's), my father - who bragged to his air force buddies that his wife was a wonderful cook - called my mother to tell her he was on the way with a couple of his friends to show off her skills.
Well, after the evening was over, she read him the riot act about surprising her with guests! But back to the story...
She looked in her icebox and cupboard and saw a chub of pork sausage, some macaroni, cans of tomato sauce and tomato soup, and a small can of mushrooms. Not much else. One can of tomato sauce is not enough for a pound of pasta, so she mixed the tomato soup with the tomato sauce, added the browned sausage and the can of mushrooms, and simmered them together for a bit. Cooked the pound of macaroni, drained it, and mixed this all together. It was a big hit! She told us all this story several times, because it was in her nature to repeat herself. This stuff was something we all grew up with; she called it macaroni casserole.
For dinner this evening, I made a slightly modified version of this: I used a medium sized can of mushrooms, twice as large as the small can, and I used egg noodles instead of macaroni. It was quite good.
but will soon! promise - now stop hitting me!
above is DH's plate... 
