Menu M...Wednesday: YOU WIN SOME, YOU LOSE SOME

Sometimes new recipes are HORRIBLE. Case in point, this past Sunday we made Hawaiian tuna salad. I had had it on the menu for weeks, but tuna just didn't sound good to either Zach or me or both of us, so I kept pushing it to the next week...and then the next. It was based on a recipe for Hawaiian chicken salad. Tuna and chicken do not have the same flavor obviously, but they do have a similar texture, so I thought I would give it a try. After all, I really enjoy mixing in chopped up apples and craisins into tuna, so I thought maybe, just maybe, it would be good.

It wasn't.

Well. Zach liked it. Not a lot, but enough. But not enough to eat leftovers the next day. I could hardly finish mine. The recipe called for celery, grapes, mandarin oranges, pineapple, mayonnaise, and almonds. I enjoyed the celery and pineapple in it, but the rest...ick. Of course, I don't like mandarin oranges too much, and, instead of using tinned ones, I used fresh Cuties, so that may have been another part of the reason--not having enough fruit juice to dilute the mayonnaise flavor. That being said, I think I also used too much mayonnaise. I don't like mayo unless it is mixed well with other ingredients, and this was far too mayonnaisey. I also ate mine on a croissant, and I've been a bit burned out on those. My other choices were tortillas, which I'm also burned out on, and bread, which seemed too boring. I wrote on facebook that I get tired of eating a sandwich halfway through it, and I'm finding that to be more and more true lately. I think I just got burned out on them because I subsisted off of toast and plain spaghetti when I was having tummy troubles.

(However, this week I did thoroughly enjoy some Italian sesame seed bread from Walmart. I toasted it in the oven with lots of butter and Italian herbs and garlic powder--soooo good!)

Tonight I made steamed lemon broccoli for the first time, and it was GREAT. I began by steaming broccoli in a pot and sauteeing onion, garlic, and celery in a pan. Then I added the broccoli with salt, pepper, and some lemon juice. I used a tad too much juice, but overall the dish had a nice flavor.

It's interesting that both of these recipes used only a handful of ingredients and mixed together foods I would have not thought to use together previously. I will try the Hawaiian recipe with chicken someday, but not for awhile...

You win some.

You lose some.