This old cartoon is from this very date, May 26, in 2009. I’ve loved a good tuna-salad sandwich since I was a kid. Mama made the best “tuna-fish salad,” but, like most of her recipes, her tuna salad was very simple. Mayonnaise, a little pickle relish and canned tuna. I know: it doesn’t get much more generic than that, but she had a real knack for mixing it all together. There’s nothing more dispiriting than anticipating a good tuna-salad sandwich and opening a can to find a watery mess that looks like the bottom of a chum bucket. As Arlo discovers, even buying the more expensive “chunk” variety is no guarantee of satisfaction.
244 responses to “A Mournful Tuna”
I’ve learned too, to stick to the fancy albacore solid kind. The other kind looks like something you’d feed to Ludwig. Blah!
For all those who have had troubles, or see them coming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ4aW4rjWiM
Just heard this on my Pandora playlist, and wanted to share.
The best tuna is the ones in pouches, especially the flavored, seasoned ones.
I also use the pouch-borne variety of tuna (non-seasoned, packed-in-water), and I make the “lux” version…chopped hard boiled egg in addition to the ingredients Jimmy’s mom used. Either sweet or dill pickle relish will work, but I personally prefer sweet. And I do make deviled ham spread the same way as she made her tuna salad.
I was thinking earlier this morning that the only thing that would likely attract more attention and comment than the possibility of sexual intrigue would be the mention of food. And here it is. 🙂
My grandmother used to make tuna salad that had not only the pickles, but chunks of pecan and apples in it. She also would put lettuce leaf on it; about the only time I liked lettuce on a sandwich. I tried a few times to make it like she did, but always failed.
Just the other day my sister and I were discussing the change from oil-packed tuna to water-packed, and how long it took us to get used to the change. Odd how things pop up in a conversation, isn’t it?
I usually like dill pickle chips in tuna salad, but every once in a while I will put chopped spanish olives (the kind with pimento) in it. Makes a very tasty sandwich with lightly toasted bread.
bill, I don’t want apples in my tuna salad, but I will put finely chopped apple in chicken salad, along with mayonnaise and chopped celery. 🙂
Ghost Sweetie, I’m still around, just some days even typing uses more energy than I can muster. I promise you, though, that if anything does happen I will leave instructions for someone to come and inform the Village. 🙂
Don’t forget the olives!
God bless us every one.
Cheap, mushy tuna packed in oil with sweet pickle relish = why I didn’t like tuna salad when I was growing up! It wasn’t until a pot luck lunch where I had some made with albacore packed in water that I decided that canned tuna was actually edible. Now I make tuna salad with some onion, sometimes h-b egg, mayo (of course), and maybe a sprinkle of curry powder. Hmmm, I wonder if capers would work?
Grandmother made hers with chopped onion and apple. I never cared for raw white onion. Now I bet it would be better with the Vidalia type.
Speaking of tuna salad, over the years I’ve tried many different recepies both from home and at restuarants/delis. However the one I’ve kept to has been my grandmothers, although I have tweaked it some. Her reicipe used drained solid albacore tuna chopped into small bits (I use one of those hand choppers) then bound with mayo and pickle brine (preferably from bread & butter chips) plus some sweet relish and diced celery to add crunch. Over the years I’ve tweaked this some and now add some Old Bay seasoning to the rest of the ingredients to add a little zing to the mixture. I prefer to chill this before eating but having this on toast with some lettuce and a few bread & butter pickle chips is a very satisfying, and memorable, meal.
Don’t know why I’m making a rare post here talking about tuna salad but I guess the talk struck a chord. Of course now I’m going to have to go and make some before the craving overwhelms me.
This little device makes a big difference in my wife’s tuna mix:
http://www.organizeit.com/images/whtcancol.jpg
Since she’s been getting the water out, I’ve happily been eating tuna sandwiches again. She grew up just tipping the can to pour off some of the water… making her mix a soggy mess.
W in Fl: Nostalgia will do that to you. 🙂 And your mention of Old Bay seasoning reminded me I forgot to say I add a couple or three grinds of black pepper to my tuna salad for seasoning.
Jean dear: I never thought of chopped olives in tuna salad, but I love green olives. I have a jar in the reefer, so I’ll give it a try. And please try to see that your notification arrangements are not needed. 🙂
Forgot one ingredient: dijon mustard to taste
Trucker: I’ve had one of those can-sized colanders for years, and I love it. Works great for canned mushrooms, canned diced tomatoes, canned black, pinto, etc. beans, anything for which the recipe calls for draining before adding.
Well here Mr. Picky eater. I do not like crunch in my tuna salad. We make ours with the Ludwig tuna (I have eaten it all my life and enjoy it) with a couple eggs (for you Debbe) mayo and season with a touch on onion powder, garlic powder and salt and pepper. I like mine on bread or put it on an english muffin with a slice of cheese and melt it in the oven. The very best tuna sandwich that I ever had was in a small sushi bar in a small town in Japan. The sushi were on plates that were suspended above us and when I saw the tuna salad at the end of lunch, I had to try it. Man was it good. It had a special mayonnaise to it.
Another cold salad that we make is chicken, mayo, grapes, celery and macaroni, with a splash of lemon juice. My wife will add onions to hers and cut up the celery real big so I can fish it out. We also will follow the same recipe but use tuna.
Finally my wife’s potato salad is excellent. The key is adding a lot of eggs to make it creamy. Again my wife will either make the onions big or just leave them out and add them to hers.
When I lived in Hawaii I got introduced to lots of delicious food by my local non-Caucasian friends. One was crab potato salad. I loved it but only problem is that it called for equal parts crab and potatoes, along with lots of goodies to enhance it. Who can afford that much crab meat?
And lobster salad. I would do almost anything for lobster salad.
Doesn’t anyone like nuts in their chicken or tuna salad? Or sweet peppers or chives or green onions or parsley or fresh dill?
And yes, capers work very well. I use anything in fridge or garden as a matter of fact, radishes, carrots, green peas.
There’s one thing I use Ludwig style tuna for: a tuna noodle casserole, as I want the tuna flavor to come through, and the delicate taste of solid white Albacore just gets lost. Of course, I also use the oil it’s packed in instead of draining it off and then replacing it because there’s no point in throwing away all that extra fish flavor.
BTW, for those of you who watch Chopped, one of the mystery ingredients once was leftover tuna noodle casserole. One of the judges, Aaron Sanchez, mentioned that he’d never actually eaten it before because it’s “Gringo Food.” (For those of you who don’t, not only is Aaron from Mexico, his mother was a famous chef and cooking writer.)
The truth is, almost anything you like works in tuna or chicken salad. Within reason. I like bourbon, but I wouldn’t put it in tuna salad. Of course, in chicken salad, I suppose you could consider it a version of “Drunken Chicken”.
I recently mentioned the lobster roll I had the time I visited Maine one year in late winter (aka early June.) The hole-in-the-wall cafe where I had it was owned by one of the local lobster boat owners. So yes, fresh it was.
And yes, Steve, you do win the Picky Eater of the Day Award. 🙂
Oh, I might have Steve beat. Tuna, in water, drained WELL (that can colander is awesome), mayo, sweet pickle, and a dash of celery seed. Basic. Don’t put fruit in my vegetables (except tomatoes), or vegetables in my fruit. And leave nuts completely out of my food. I will eat cashews or peanuts on their own, but that is it. Jackie’s food pictures are pretty, but I could not eat a bite. Then again, I am known to take casseroles apart and eat each bit separate, so there is that too.
Golly Neds, JJ ! You drain the tuna juice out first (holding the lid down on the tuna and decanting thus) and feed it to the cat(s) !
Tuna salad: any kind of tuna, drained but not dry. Lots of real mayo. Goodly amount of salt. Nothing else currently – still don’t have usable teeth!
A few days back we wrote of streaking, thanks to a Janis photo in a JJ cartoon. Someone opined it may have surprised/shocked the viewers in the college building. Y’know, maybe not. Those viewers were art students, presumably, and they might very well have been using live unclad models. As such, they’d hardly be shocked by the streakers. In fact, those students might have considered the streakers as PPPP – “Passing Parade of Possible Posers” – and kept them in mind for future employment in the department!
To shock people, the streakers would have needed an audience of those with the innate sensitivity of the old Ernie Kovacs character, Percy Dovetonsils. I always enjoyed those PD skits/bits….
PS: My past cats would love to lap up any drained juice from tuna; it wasn’t wasted.
This is odd. Janis appears to be tottering on the edge of making a huge mistake, and we are all discussing the various ways to construct tuna salad. Well, I’m sure Janis’s pending folly is being discussed to death over on The Dark Side. That’s what they do there.
In re:
Would I want to re-connect with a female with whom I had a relationship in HS or college?
No. (Well, with one exception, from HS. Well, perhaps two. And mostly just to see how their hopes, dreams and ambitions turned out.)
Would I want to re-connect with a female with whom I had a relationship over twenty years ago?
I can’t think of one that I would.
Would I want to re-connect with a female with whom I had a relationship between ten and twenty years ago?
Doubtful. Likely no.
Would I want to re-connect with a female with whom I had a relationship in the past ten years?
Yes and no. It would depend on which one.
Face it…anyone, female or male, you knew more than twenty years ago is very unlikely to be that same person now. But I’ll bet some of you Book of Faces users have discovered that already.
I have found it interesting to dig up old friends from, say, 60 yrs. ago – though there were no relationships in today’s physical usage of that word. Classmates.com is a great place to start. They provide a means for making contact with members and also, separately, a way to find HS yearbook pictures even if the subject is not a member of Classmates.com. Of course, they want to sell you copies of said books, but such is not required to search and view. I have all my yearbooks from HS, college, and several places at which I have taught; they provide nice browsing from time to time.