I am accidentally on a food-posting kick recently, but this post was obviously meant-to-be for two reasons:
- I made really good tuna melts this weekend
- A coworker enlightened me with his tuna methods this afternoon
And for both of those reasons, I must share my thoughts on tuna. Canned tuna, that is.
1. Tuna Melts
The cupboards are bare in our apartment these days. Hugh eats take-out at work for all of his meals and I make a big meal or two and live off of leftovers most of the week. On Saturday, we found ourselves in rarely charted territory — both at home, working on separate things, and in need of lunch. I foraged a bit and came up with bread, pepper jack cheese, and canned tuna. We’re havin’ tuna melts! I exclaimed.
I toasted some bread, sliced up some cheese, and mixed some tuna with mayo, soy sauce, sriracha, chili powder, celery salt, cayenne, and black pepper. Took the bread out of the toaster oven, piled some cheese onto one slice and threw it back in under the broiler for a couple minutes to get melty, bubbly pepper jack.
After piling on a ton of tuna, I squirted some more sriracha on top because there can never be enough sriracha on a thing (an invaluable lesson I learned from my friend Elizabeth). And we had ourselves a tuna melt (which we had again for lunch Sunday because times are tough, folks).
2. Tuna Enlightenment
When my coworker proudly informed me that he brought tuna (dinner leftovers) for lunch, I thought tuna noodle casserole, a tuna sandwich, or maybe an actual hunk of tuna steak. But he clarified that he made tuna which is so much more than just tuna. To canned tuna he adds mayo (real, Hellman’s), hard boiled egg, relish, all sorts of bell peppers, and spicy mustard.
Not all of this was new to me — my standard non-pepper-jack tuna melt requires cheddar and spicy mustard. I don’t like relish, but I know people sometimes use it in tuna salad. I’ve put diced onions in tuna before but never bell peppers, though it doesn’t seem that strange.
But egg?
I feel as though egg salad should have its own show and tuna salad should have its own show. They’re both great for their own reasons in their own time slots. A tuna + egg spin-off is not really necessary. I mean, we all saw what happened to Joey.
Because I believe in being open-minded as well as eating food, I might give it a try. But it will have to wait because I need a tuna break.
Plus, our stash ran out this weekend.
