I love tuna salad. I love egg salad. Rather than choose between them, put them together, and you've got a marriage made in tastebud heaven. The ingredient that holds it together is the sweet pickles. I first made it with sweet and spicy pickles, and have since used a combination of bread and butter pickles (sweet) and spicy dill pickles. I am not exacting with amounts, since different palates prefer didn't pungencies - I will say that I like strong flavors, which means lots of pickles and onions :)
Tuna Egg Salad 1 can of albacore tuna, flaked 2 hard boiled eggs, chopped chopped pickles (sweet & spicy), to taste (I use about 3-4 tablespoons) onion, finely chopped, to taste (I use about 1-2 tablespoons) mayonnaise, to taste (I use about 2-3 tablespoons) dried dill weed (optional) black pepper (optional) Mix it all up, folding in the chopped eggs last. Serve as is, in a sandwich, or my favorite way (as pictured) - on crackers...specifically Trader Joe's whole grain seed crackers and Ak-Maks (also whole grain, also sold at TJ's).
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On my monthly Costco shop, I always buy a package of flap meat. It makes the best steak for the best price ($8-9 per pound - used to be $6!). It's a splurge but we get two "fancy" meals out of our $25 purchase. It comes in two pieces, so I put them in the freezer individually in gallon bags (I usually thaw by submersing the meat - still in the sealed bag - in a bowl of hot water for about twenty minutes). To make this delicious steak, I heat up butter (or bacon fat) in our cast iron pan on medium high, turn on the fan, and cook it on one side for 5-7 minutes. I flip it and repeat. Sometimes I have to flip it one more time to get it perfectly medium to medium rare. I let it sit for a few minutes before slicing against the grain. If I am cooking onions (usually red), I cook them in the (greased) pan for about 5-10 minutes and then add the steak, cooking them both together until the onions are nicely charred (I take them out before the steak). Sometimes I add mushrooms, but if I do that I usually cook it all before I make the steak, so as not to overcrowd the pan and because mushrooms are liquidy. This is one of our favorite family dinners - steak, mashed potatoes, and salad (the kids don't have the onions and blue cheese - more for us!). How I concocted last weekend’s Turkey Spinach Artichoke Chowder - definitely a rough draft (speaking as a writer), but it was delicious (husband raved) and I will be making a final version the next time I have turkey gravy (may be a while):
I wasn’t paying attention to amounts (I rarely do), but the base of this soup was leftover turkey gravy (from Christmas dinner) and chicken broth. I made the meatballs out of ground turkey, frozen chopped spinach (defrosted in the microwave), parmesan (the canned stuff, I admit it), garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, and - here’s the weird part - cream cheese. Next time I would soften the cream cheese and thoroughly mix it with the seasonings before adding it to the meat, but this time I got away with putting it in the mixture in random chunks (I tried to distribute evenly) and letting them melt into the soup. So basically, I brought the base (gravy/broth) to a boil, added in roasted red potatoes I had frozen (you could use fresh, but just cook longer), reboiled, lowered to simmering, and added the meatballs (making them as I went - plop, plop, plop). Then I added some quartered (or maybe it was halved) canned artichoke hearts (that I had frozen, but I don’t think that matters). After ten minutes or so, I thickened it by adding potato starch and sour cream (next time I will dissolve the potato starch into the sour cream - or a cupful of soup - to avoid glops). Cooked for another five minutes and it was done. Yum! In an effort to cut back on carbs - especially refined grains - I am trying to find tasty, workable substitutes for crackers, chips, basically anything crunchy or doughy (just typing that gives me cravings). Arriving home from homeschool park day around 3pm, my snack brain turned on and I started thinking out of the (bread) box as I contemplated my options, not wanting to repeat anything I had already eaten today, which meant no eggs, cheese, nuts, or fruit.
When I went to the pantry to get a bottle of apple cider vinegar (for mixing with garlic olive oil to dip carrots), I noticed a can of skipjack tuna from Trader Joe's. I always buy the wild albacore tuna from Costco, but something about that name just made me want to try it, even though it's chunk light. I knew that I still wanted protein, and near the can of tuna was a jar of sliced dill pickles (also from TJ's) - the kind I usually chop and put in tuna salad. It occurred to me that the pickles were the right shape for rolling, and then I realized that other tuna salad mix-ins could also work, like pickled jalapeno peppers and pepperoncini. So I mixed the tuna with a little mayo (just enough to moisten it), and voila, inside out tuna rolls! I did add a little chopped onion after the first taste, because you know, onions and pickles... The only one not pictured is the artichoke heart. It was okay, but it needed something, so I dropped it in the leftover vinaigrette dip from my carrot snack and let it marinate for a few minutes. Then when I topped it with the tuna, it was delightful. My favorite, though, was the stuffed pepperoncini. I didn't use celery because I had already had that earlier in the day with cream cheese and lox - if you add capers, it's a grown-up version of ants on a log...or you could do dill for termites :) Another low-carb way I sometimes eat canned tuna is mixed with cottage cheese and salsa. Next time, I'm going to try it with Sriracha mayo on a cucumber slice...mmm... |
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