Salads have, for hundreds of years, been a way of mixing staple foods into a useful dish with typically a salty flavor base; indeed, the root of the word comes from the Latin for salt. The right balance of salt in our diet gives us health benefits. A liquid solution will also serve as an emetic. However, a 1000 to 1 ratio of salt intake is lethal, but on the plus side for this dish, you'll be pickled pink. So, like anything good for you, a mix of ingredients needs to be balanced. This dish will drive you to the grave with all the gracefulness of a car rolling on only 3 wheels.
As an adult and after my college years, I noticed macaroni in all kinds of accompaniments where I don't think it belongs. Usually, seeing it in overly mixed company had a reflex response. On one particular social occasion, I was served this dish. A later conversation identified that my attempts to hide evidence of my distaste had indeed killed a houseplant, but not, apparently, the cat that got blamed for the evidence found.
By taxonomy, this is, of course a salad or side dish. However, because of its salt content, might be therefore thought of as a condiment, an emergency medical supply in case of accidental poisonous ingestion, or a fishy tool of the kitchen assassin.
Core Ingredients
* Prepackaged macaroni, often purchased in a box with an envelope of cadmium-colored powder
* Canned tuna, which smells and looks quite a lot like cat food
* Ratios of salad dressing, mayonnaise, and sour cream
Additions
* Onion
* Various muffled spices intent primarily on resuscitating either the color or the texture
This dish is prepared by first cooking the macaroni noodles. One recommendation I will make is to reserve the envelope of powder and use it with a 3 to 1 mixture of mineral oil. It removes rust from gardening tools, while also creating a cheerful lacquer for spades or shears.
The dish is finalized by mixing other ingredients into the macaroni in a large bowl, which can then be stored overnight to further embalm the canned tuna fish. The mixing process usually makes a slurping sound which can also serve as an emetic. The putrescent sedimentation that is produced is then covered, tightly, and refrigerated. If it is not covered tightly, the pungent smell will permeate rapidly. Use of the refrigerator simply doubles the seal. There is no known exobacteria that can form on this dish.
First: prepackaged macaroni. Sure, it is thrifty. It has a shelf life on par with the half-life of spent nuclear fuel. Most college students have learned how to cook it, either through trial-and-error, or by following the dinosaur cartoon instructions on the cheerful box. It's a shame that they don't use the same cadmium powder on the box printing, it just isn't as vibrant as the powder in the envelope. Please don't ingest the contents of the envelope. All edibility tests were performed in North Korea by enemies of the state. This important health and safety testing also was used to determine if the human subjects were witches. Those that survived were drowned, so as to put an end to sorcery. I believe it is there to preserve freshness, much like a silica pack (which is labeled poison). In one popular brand, several ingredients are included to help in reconstitution, which means that the producer took a block of cheese, hit it with a particle accelerator to break it down into quarks, and used quantum chemistry to make it reconstitute into cheese again. Quark Macaroni and Cheese is in fact a very popular brand. Unless you are sustaining life in a fallout shelter, the artificial ingredients and mineral additives will deaden you to the sensation that you are eating food. Foreign food aid regards it as unsafe to distribute to impoverished countries.
Second: Canned tuna. Once again, as a canned food, this also is good to have in a fallout shelter, and will last as long as a nuclear winter. I find the offense of its smell unparalleled. Fresh tuna is great with vegetable salads. I believe that canned tuna is often preserved with oil. My experience is that Castor oil is a popular choice. This is also an emetic.
Third: Ratios of salad dressing, mayonnaise, and sour cream. Salad dressing is an art form, not a squeeze bottle. The cheapest oils are used in its making. Mayonnaise continues to crop its ugly whitehead in far too many recipes across the fruited plains. Who can honestly say that mixing salad dressing and mayonnaise even looks edible? The introduction of sour cream simply adds more fat, somehow. Across all three, there is a guarantee of at least a half cup of salt, enough fat for making tallow candles, and adhesive properties so strong that an oil-can fish will somehow stick to a noodle.
Remaining optional ingredients do little to the sensation of the dish, although raw onion is said to add flavor. Other than a spoonful of cayenne, nothing else could. Without them, the pallor of the macaroni tuna salad would make even a political prisoner in North Korea prefer to try their luck with the cadmium powder than eat this.
The salt content of this salad is off the charts, so it really is a dish of salt with other ingredients included to add bulk. The fat content starts with oily fish, moves on to oil-based dressing, includes other oils and fats, and concludes with spices so strong that they should only be reserved for pickling. In making a fish and pasta dish, cold or hot, start with fresh fish, please. Then, treat yourself to fresh pasta and leave the box macaroni out in the shelter. A white sauce can then be created with a good, dry cheese. Fresh, savory vegetables in small quantity will finish closely to what was probably once a traditional Italian dish.
Potluck Crime: salt as a deadly weapon, lipid malice, and undeniable under food putrescence.
