Tuna melts should be unruinable.
Tuna, mayo, cheese, bread.
The process is so simple that you really need to make questionable decisions at every opportunity to mess it up. Luckily my entire life is questionable. Luckily.
Bread selection is the most defensible choice here; an inoffensive, store-brand wheat. Tastes like nothing but ostensibly has nutrients that are good for the body. Underwhelming, but fine. And cheap. When I got my first real job out of college I went on a Dave’s Killer Bread kick ($6 a loaf!), and when I told my dad as much he looked me straight in the eyes and, like I was doing meth, said, “That’s not sustainable.” So I went on a meth kick instead.
The secret to great tuna salad is the secret to all foods and isn’t much of a secret at all. Add fat. Unfortunately, the secret to staying skinny is even less of a secret, given that there’s a single word conveniently assigned to both the cause and the result of the failure to do so. But tuna without mayonnaise isn’t bad, it just tastes less like mayonnaise. The relationship between the two isn’t so much complementary as combative, with mayo first serving to moisturize the almost woolly texture of cheap, canned tuna, then quickly moving to eradicate any trace of fish flavor. There’s a balance to be found, but adding anything more than a tablespoon of mayo is admitting you just don’t like tuna. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Subway is out there selling what are basically tuna-tinged mayonnaise sandwiches because it turns out the public’s optimal tuna salad ratio is 98% mayo, 2% fish. And I’ll absolutely pay five bucks for that ratio and the ignorance I can claim along with it, but at home I can never bring myself to confront the actual mound of mayonnaise it would take to get there, so I’ll just sprinkle in some pepper and cumin and down it as fast as I can.
That doesn’t make me a hero, though. Cheese assumes many of the same duties as mayo and arguably does a better job. The tuna will be drier, yes, but you can drain it a little less than usual to prevent it from going full wool, then a proper cheddar should be enough to overwhelm the tuna almost entirely. Best case scenario it tastes like you’re eating a cheese sandwich by the ocean. For last night, though, a lack of a proper cheddar forced me to turn to a weak pepperjack – a more rubbery, less potent cheese not equipped to win a fight against unsalted tuna. And also apparently impervious to pickle juice. In hindsight the pickles really should’ve been diced and mixed into the tuna, or maybe left out entirely. They certainly shouldn’t have been laid to rest atop a bed of weak, somehow-frictionless, half-cooked pepperjack. The excess pickle juice beaded and stalled momentarily before sliding along the arc of the of the cheese and down onto the plate, where it soaked and ruined the crunch of the toast. Full disclosure, the effect was so visually unappealing that after I took the picture I ate the pickles separately. I don’t regret that decision, but it meant that my main course was a stack – let’s not even call it a sandwich – of bread, dry tuna, weak pepperjack, and onion. Yum.
And I know, I know, I need to keep this thing about the food, but I can’t leave hanging the loyal readers of the Neighbor Steve Report. That’s not to say this is a satisfying update. Really the only information I have is that Neighbor Steve is officially back and seems to be alive. Back from what? Unclear. I caught him on his way out of the house this morning, and his door swung closed before I could peek in for any signs of female companionship or plant neglect. He gave me with a quick “Oh, hey” that wasn’t necessarily dripping with warmth, but it was too early for pep anyway. Enthusiasm before 6am is a sign of a serial killer. There looked to be some leftover alcohol bagged up under his eyes and each step lagged a bit, not quite a stumble, but like his chest was setting a pace that his limbs were struggling to match. The second half of a two-day hangover if I’ve ever seen one. I hit him a sprightly “How are ya?” that he deflected with a wave and a “Gotta get to work” without breaking stride on the way to his car. And so the Neighbor Steve Report ends with a whimper. A two-day hangover means vacation, which was always the odds-on favorite, but easily the least exciting answer. The only point of drama is that he doesn’t trust me to water his plants, and even that may be a nonstarter because, thinking about it now, there’s a chance that his catalogue of greenery is 100% succulents. Definitely not the compelling subplot this blog needed to maintain momentum. And Neighbor Steve didn’t get home until after I’d already eaten tonight, so not only am I underwhelmed, I’m also undersauced.
Burned and Bland 