my dad made a dish that we all loved, which he named after our family name on the spur of the moment when we asked him what it was called ...
let’s say “Smith” is our last name, so he claimed the dish was called “Smith Special” ... no doubt he had no idea what the name really was, but didn’t want to admit that he made a dish that he didn’t know the name of ... us, being little kids at the time, thought that was a perfectly good name, and went away completely satisfied that we knew what we were eating, namely “Smith Special” ... thereafter, we often asked him to make “Smith Special” ...
“Smith Special” was made from elbow macaroni, canned crushed tomatoes, chopped green bell peppers, ground beef and salt and pepper ...
i was telling my wife about this, and she said her family had the same dish but called it “Chinese Goulash” ... since her family is from New Jersey and mine is from North Carolina we figured the ACTUAL recipe came from some magazine like Family Circle or Good Housekeeping, because women’s homemaker magazines were pervasive in those pre-Internet days ...
In our family a favorite was, ‘Mrs. Klar’s Busy-Day Hot Dish.’ My MIL got the recipe from the neighboring farm wife. It’s sort of like Tater Tot Casserole, if you’ve ever had that.
Mrs. Klar had 15 kids; she was d@mn busy, LOL!
“elbow macaroni, canned crushed tomatoes, chopped green bell peppers, ground beef and salt and pepper .”
Good ol’ goulash. Mom made it, too.