Big Tuna in Little Versailles

While still yucking it up at Chuck's last post, I am once again reminded of how polarized Chuck and my views are; especially when it comes to cooking food. Perhaps it is such dichotomy that makes this donkey such a wonderful beast, and perhaps our friendship such an interesting and fulfilling one. However... Chuck boasts about only ever needing salt and pepper, as if he went mining for jellybeans one day, and presto, discovered salt, and now shops it around like Willy Loman and so many shop-vacs. I too use salt, but I also am as little afraid of spices as I am of using color in a painting.

After a balcony smoke and mini-debate on the subject of salt, pepper, and the other "superflous" spices, as Chuck so referred to them,  I challenged him to a "tuna-off." Not to say that my tuna salad sandwich is a recipe I would tattoo on my ass, like a mulit-colored peace sign, or a Canadian flag or something, but there are a few tricks I've learned over the years that have rendered my tuna so good that I almost have to remember to even use bread at all.

It is true that Spartan living is desirable to one without even a pair of spoons, as is it generally required to hit the books while in prison, yet cooking for me has always provided a certain solice and break from the complexities of life. In this sense, Sands and I are like Anne Murray and Janice Joplin, and ne'er shall the two twain. Even the most hectic and difficult of recipes immediately puts me at ease. Cooking is probably the only thing I do consistently, as I am a lazy M'er F'er. I am sometimes even too lazy to buy cigarettes, and I've often said that this may be my one hope in someday quitting the weeds.

I will say that my tuna salad recipe takes about the same time as Chuck's to make; but it is a different animal altogether. You might say that if our respective tuna salads were robots, then Chuck's would be the the old and battered R2-D2 knock-off called B.O.B. in the movie The Black Hole, while mine would most certainly be a less gay version of C3PO.

There is a town in the film Wild At Heart, called Big Tuna. In a sketchy little bungalow, we meet a menacing and foul-toothed villain named Bobby Peru. It is in this home you will find a cubby hole behind a draping red David Lynchian velvet moo-moo. Pull back the folds of drapery, and you will find a dwarf reciting a secret recipe backwards....His last words, ".eciohc si anut sihT"

Kinger's Big Tuna

prep time: 5 minutes (provided you own more than just chilled beers)

1 can tuna (drain oil, put in bowl)
1 clove garlic (minced)
1/4 white onion (minced)
1 green onion (chopped)
2 tbsp. mayonaisse
1 lemon (juiced)
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tbsp. cracked pepper
1 tbsp. pickle juice
1/2 tsp. dijon mustard
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. paprika

mix and put on bread and eat on plate.