Sunday, November 9, 2008

Tuna Salad (p. 164), Tuna melt (p. 182), Panned or Sicilian Spinach (p. 306), and Ginger soy sauce (p. 571)

This is the lost blog of November.

Many of you know that although I date these the day I actually cooked them, I often blog about them considerably later. While leafing through TJOC recently I noticed a couple recipes that I KNEW I made weren't marked and when I searched the blog, I noticed that they weren't blogged about. So I'm correcting the problem, about two months too late.

Most of my regular readers know that there aren't many foods that I extremely dislike. Onions are one, although I'm growing to hate them less and include them in most TJOC recipes. Bell peppers--always get cut from recipes. And my number one enemy:

This guy.





Tuna. Canned tuna is so disgusting that even the smell makes me nauseous.

Fortunately, Josh loves tuna. Honestly, we have a grocery stores worth of tuna in this house. And he happily eats all of the TJOC tuna recipes.

I made Tuna Salad (p. 164). I'm just not much of a meat salad type person (although I've developed a curried chicken salad that is amazing!).

The recipe is easy. Mix tuna, celery, and mayonnaise. And you are finished.





It's a pretty boring recipe but it is really easy. If you tuna lovers are anything like me, you have your favorite additions to the meat salad. This recipe is extremely bare-bones.

So what did I do with this boring tuna salad?

Made a tuna melt (p. 182)!

Once you have the tuna salad you are halfway to a tuna melt.

Take a few slices of toast, spread tuna salad on them, and top it with some grated Monterey Jack cheese.



And then broil:



I made the tuna melts in the toaster over. I really recommend using a toaster oven when you don't want heat up the house.

Josh said the tuna wraps were tasty, although he said I piled the tuna way too high. They must have been good because after he ate those two, he made himself another :) Even so, it's likely that's the last tuna melt I will ever be making.

I ate Panned or Sicilian Spinach (p. 306) instead of the tuna melts.

The first step was to trim and wash a pound of spinach. I always find this step to be annoying--I really hate washing vegetables.




In a skillet, I sauteed garlic (a lot of garlic--a LOT of garlic--far more than TJOC's recommendation) in olive oil.



The spinach was then added to the garlic. TJOC recommends cooking it for about 3-5 minutes but high altitude struck again and it took about twenty minutes.




The recipe recommends making a dipping sauce so I made Ginger soy sauce (p. 571).

This is an easy recipe. Start with ginger. I used my ginger from a tube (it looks gross but it IS real ginger).




Add a half-cup of soy sauce. That is a LOT of soy sauce.





How was it? Good but my mother makes a version of this that is much much better. Mom's recipe includes potatoes...and I thought the soy sauce was too soy saucey for spinach. I don't' think I would bother with the sauce again.


What was Josh doing while I was making tuna melts? Working on his beloved 1969 classic car with the dog. I told him that I would put their picture on the blog :) Who among my readers knows what kind of car this is?



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2 comments:

  1. Would that be my cousins Charger?... Love the blog, I am a food blog junkie... although im more into baking because I am a horrible cook.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It sure is! And I'm more of a baker too--although not at this high altitude, which seems to ruin everything I try to make :)

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