Holy Cats!

This is just a tuna fish sandwich. Or is it? It is.

When I first met C. and began cooking for him, I would try to make good meals, sometimes fancy, sometimes not, but sometimes trying to fix meals "the way his mom did". You know, so he wouldn't go into total and complete shock. My growing up years included nori, stinky cheese, and breakfasts that some deranged hippies deemed, "healthy". I wasn't about to serve my guy a bowl-full of cracked wheat swimming in un-pasteurized raw goat's milk and drizzled with honey from a friend's farm - he would have run so far away from me, I would have never seen him again. So imagine when I set a plain ol' tuna fish sandwich in front of him and he gave me a quizzical look, and then ate the sandwich. But never really asked for them after that. I just never got it. He didn't complain, or even say much, not that I expected high praise for making him a simple sandwich, but still. That look haunted me.

I found out why a few years ago. This is about the time that C. began helping in the kitchen. Helping: meaning he'd put together a lunch if I was busy folding laundry or something. (I think it was his ruse to keep from folding laundry, the man will avoid that like the plague.) So he's clinking around in the kitchen, using every-single-dish in the cupboards to make lunch and he calls out, "hon, would you like your tuna sandwich toasted or untoasted?"

What????

Toasted? I'd never had to answer that question. It sounded gross. If you really think about it, so is the mere idea of a tuna fish sandwich in the first place. Fish (really fishy fish) mixed with mayonnaise, stuck between two slices of bread. Anyone who knows me, knows I really don't like fish at all. So when I eat a tuna sandwich, I do my best to just keep those thoughts moving. As in, "this is not fish mixed with mayo stuck between two slices of bread." It is more like, "I'm eating lunch and that is it."

Now let's back up here.

I had never eaten a toasted tuna fish sandwich. My mom had eight kids - count 'em - eight. If you wanted a fancy lunch, you weren't going to find it around our house. There was no cutting the crusts off your sandwich or sending them through the cookie cutters to make fun shapes. No sirree, Bob. My mom was all about fast at lunch. She'd knock herself out making dinner, but lunch? Lunch was the prelude to my mom's favorite part of the day - naptime. I'm guessing that her ideas ran more to fast intake and easy clean-up than taste. As in, "let's get these kid fueled, clean up this mess in the kitchen, and down for their naps so I can have an hour of uninterrupted quiet. I have eight of these little monsters, and if I don't declare a moment of peace, they will tear me limb from limb and then pack the unassembled pieces off to the nut-house." At least that's pretty much what I gather she was thinking by the look on her face.

So, no. I'd never had a toasted tuna fish sandwich. But let me tell you, you need to start popping your sandwich bread in the toaster, get out your butter and get ready once those toast slices pop. It is life changing. Well, maybe that's a little dramatic, but it is darned good.

***Disclaimer. It is summer. I can write an ode to a toasted tuna fish sandwich if I darned well want to. Also, the bread in the sandwich pictured above is Dave's Good Seed bread. And OMG (as the teenagers say) it is sooo good. It is the closest bread to the stuff my mom made when I was a kid. I splurge every once in awhile and buy it - it is expensive, but worth it. I'm telling you siblings, if you want to be transported back to childhood, get some of this bread, toast it, slather on the butter, and prepare to be amazed. Of course there is no substitute for the real deal, and mom isn't yelling at you to clean your room in the background as you eat. Dave (apparently) can only go so far.