Toasted with Swiss Cheese, please

Well, how would you like to have someone come along and pick something off of you?
Oh dear! I keep forgetting I'm not in Kansas!


It's apple season. I heart/love/am obsessed with apples.

When I was in first, second and third grade, I took apples to school every day in my lunch. And then dipped them in ketchup.
How gross is that?

I was ridiculed. But I was stubborn and stuck by it.

Gross Gross Gross.

But anyway, apples are amazing.

And come October, I want to cook apples - I love sauteed apples with cinnamon and butter and sugar; I love apple pies; I love apple cakes (I made one just this weekend - with cinnamon cream cheese icing) - it is still being yummy.

Paul loves apple cider.

The kids love apples. Period.

I love apples and peanut butter - a snack my dad taught me to love - I am forever indebted.

But you know what else I love?
Tuna Salad.

Relevant?
yes, because the best bites in tuna salad are crisp, cold Fuji or Gala apples.

My sweet Paul and I disagree vehemently about this.
No fruit salads -and that includes Tuna Salad.

But, he's wrong.

Anyway, Ada Brooks requested Tuna Salad for lunch today.
By the time she made such a request, she had opened a can of tuna, so I couldn't exactly turn her down.

4 - 5 oz cans of white tuna (get dolphin safe. really. they've probably killed dolphins in the process still, but if it's not dolphin safe, it means they've specifically targeted dolphin populations to find the tuna, and that's an ugly thing to do - it's bad stewardship and it's the worst kind of dominion over the creatures)

approximately 1/3 cup of lite mayo (When i make chicken salad, i often make my own mayo. It's easy, and is reason number 145 to have your own food processor. But with tuna salad, the tuna taste is so strong that making one's own mayo would be a waste. In this case, it's just serving as a binding agent)

1/2 of a large fuji or gala apple (red delicious and golden delicious will be a bit too mealy and granny smith will be too tart - others might work, but I can always get a fuji or a gala, so I don't usually experiment)

3-4 Tablespoons of sweet pickle relish (now, here, I'll make a confession. I always put about 2 T of regular sweet pickle relish, but the other 2 T are my homemade hot/sweet pickles chopped up really finely. This is what makes the Tuna Salad epic. If you want some pickles for your tuna salad, run by here and honk, I've got a gallon made up right now - I'll run out a jar to you)

Generous sprinklings of Salt and Pepper. Especially Pepper.

Do not put egg in your Tuna Salad.
Do not put celery in your Tuna Salad.

(Well, you do whatever you feel like, but I'll roll my eyes).

Best served cold over a pile of greens, beside wheat crackers.
Or best of all with a slice of swiss on good, buttered wheat bread toasted in the toaster oven on both sides.

Do not make your tuna melts with American Cheese. Even though I eat them greedily like that from Brent's Drugstore - that doesn't mean other people can get away with that.

And now I sit down to this, with a diet sunkist and an episode of Monk.


Thank the Lord for apple season. And for naptime.