Whip It Up week 1: Tuna melt with sprouts & avocado

For 2 people:

Your favorite bread or roll (ciabatta, or in this case I used sourdough bread)
Your favorite cheese (I used white extra-sharp cheddar; provolone or swiss would also be delightful)
2 cans of solid white albacore tuna (the normal size - about 6 oz each)
2 spoonfuls of sour cream
1 spoonful of mayo
squirt of deli-style mustard (the grainy-looking kind, not boring plain yellow)
pepper to taste
sprouts (I used a mixed container of broccoli, clover, and mustard sprouts)
1 avocado

Make tuna salad:
- Drain tuna and empty into a bowl
- Add sour cream, mayo, and mustard, just enough to coat everything - you can always add more, so be frugal to start!
- Mix & mash until tuna is all shredded and coated (add more sour cream/mayo/mustard if you like)
- Add pepper to taste; stir it in

Make tuna melt:
- Turn on your toaster oven (or regular oven if you don't have a toaster oven) and set it to "broil"

- Lightly toast your bread (if using a toaster oven, do this by popping the bread in there while the toaster oven heats up; if this is the method you use, it will be more toasted on the top, so put that side down before adding the tuna)

- Spread tuna salad on bread, pressing it down so you have a flat-ish top
- Place a slice or three of cheese on top of the tuna
- Put the whole shebang into your oven (I used my toaster oven, much smaller, quicker, and easier)
- Keep it in there for a few minutes until the cheese is all melted

- Pop it out and let cool for a few minutes
- Pile sprouts and sliced avocado on top
- Take a huge bite and enjoy!
(Depending on your preference and how sturdy your bread is, you might need to use a knife & fork to eat. The ciabatta at the cafe let me pick it up to eat it, but the sourdough I used at home was too brittle so I had to use a fork!)

From Whip It Up! ...

This recipe was easy for me to follow because I was making it up...I had roughly the same thing in a little cafe a couple weeks ago, and had been thinking to myself how I could duplicate it, so it was all well-formed inside my head. I wrote it down here after I made it, pretty much exactly as I did it!

Some tweaks to make to suit your own taste, style, and timeframe: You could use store-bought tuna salad, or a different ratio of sour cream to mayo to mustard (low-fat, anyone?), or add some onion or other veggies to the tuna; use a different type of cheese if you prefer, say, swiss or provolone to cheddar; and definitely just use your fav bread on the bottom. The restaurant used ciabatta, which was also great, but I happened to get some fresh sourdough from the farmer's market this week, so I used that.

When I make this again, I won't go overboard on the cheese - my slices of cheddar were rather thick, and you can see it melted all the way down over the sides so you can't even see the tuna and bread! Still delicious, but it would be nice to taste the tuna a bit more, plus less cheese would mean less fat.

The nice thing about this recipe was that it was very simple and quick - and it could have been even quicker if I had made the tuna salad the day before, or bought pre-made tuna salad, and if I had pre-sliced cheese and bread. Melting the cheese in the toaster oven took no more than 10 minutes, and all that's left after that is to pile the sprouts and avocado on top! Super fast and easy.

We discovered from making this that my hubby doesn't particularly care for sprouts, so while I would definitely make this meal again, I might do it for company when he wasn't around, or as part of a few options at a picnic, or else just put some lettuce and avocado on his and only use the sprouts on mine! I am newly in love with sprouts, so more sprouts for me would be peachy.

Please comment if you have questions, or if you try it out!! Now I'm all hungry from typing this up...


Whip It Up blog
My Whip It Up pictures
My Whip It Up goal: to publish a new recipe every Monday, starting with this one. Luckily blogger has an auto-publish feature, so I can type this all up ahead of time and set it to publish on Monday - how nice. Oops, now I've given away my secret.

Herbs are Growing!

Look at that basil grow! I hope I can eat it by the end of the summer...I also hope it doesn't attract the masses of japanese beetles that my mom's did a couple summers ago - that was so gross.

I'm not growing anything as exciting as my cousin Katy is, but we do also have a pepper plant out back that is getting flowers. We have TONS of bumblebees, so hopefully they'll visit the pepper plant so that I don't have to help the flowers have flower sex like Katy did.

Next post: Whip It Up Week 1! Coming Monday, 7 July (not June, thanks Mom!). Yes, I have discovered blogger's auto-publish feature.

Dichotomy

Yesterday afternoon, I was getting a shower in preparation for my evening with Kelly M, after having spent the afternoon planting herbs in a long planter box Paul installed on the side of our porch. As I shampooed my hair, I realized that I had just finished reading Dune that morning, and that evening I would be going with Kelly and Natalie to see Sex and the City the movie. The height of sci-fi/fantasy nerdiness in the morning, the height of domestic suburban whiteness in the afternoon, and the height of uber-girliness in the evening. Yes, I enjoyed Sex and the City. Yes, I enjoyed Dune. Is there something wrong with me?

Wait, don't answer that.

Here's our new herb box:

From the left: oregano, sage, rosemary, blank space that will hopefully become basil, chives, and spearmint.

I got basil seeds months ago and never got around to planting them. It's a little late now, but we'll see. I planted some in the box, and the rest in another extra pot that's out back in the sun with the habanero plant Paul got. It's supposed to take 7-14 days to germinate, so in 2 weeks I'll know if I was successful.

Now I'm going to go plan a few sunflower seeds (also late) and sort thru these huge clothing boxes so we can finally get them out of our living room. Then the only boxes left will be in the basement, where at least I don't have to see them every day. And then, if I have a bit of time left, I might clean the kitchen.

Jamie's wedding & 99 luftballoons (minus 87)

Had lots of fun at Jamie's wedding:


Even bought a nice new black dress at Target, where Nicole, Paul, and I passed the 2 hours between the wedding and the reception. I'll see all these guys again in two weeks at Steph's wedding, where I'll get to spend more time with Jamie and less with Steph, since that's how weddings go!

For Father's Day, Paul and I went down to York and took the Askeys out to the Texas Roadhouse, Dad Askey's pick. Had delicious ribs, and saw this amazing sight on the way home:

Started out seeing just one and then four as we were getting gas, then Paul took a creative way home hoping to bring us closer, and the view opened up into what you see here. We drove around to the other side of the mountain and got another view of the seven still high enough to see from there, but this is by far the best picture I got. There are 12, but one is below the horizon and harder to see: it's down and to the right of the 4th balloon in low on the right. Cool, huh? I've never seen that many balloons up in the air before, except in pictures, so it was really neat to see in real life. I have to get a ride in a hot air balloon at some point in my life. So cool.

New toys!

I got two new toys yesterday:

First, my Kitchen Aid juicer attachment came from amazon, which I got for just $0.52 more than I would have paid if I had waited 2-3 weeks for Linens 'n Things to order it in for me, and it was delivered right to my door in just 4 days! This is why I love amazon.

I also rode my bike to Holmes Bike Shop in Camp Hill (it took less than 20 minutes!) and they installed clipless pedals and the matching cleats for my shoes (also as in the picture) so that now I will pedal more efficiently and I can pull up as well as push down! I practiced a little bit in their parking lot before riding around the block to wait for Paul to pick me up at the Cornerstone Coffee House, and I even got my first fall out of the way: going up a sidewalk bump that proved too high, caught my back wheel, and fell into the low grassy bank to my right. I couldn't have picked a better place to fall - it was soft and slanted up to my right, so I wasn't even scratched. I made it the next 20 feet to Cornerstone with no more problems, and treated myself to a Caramel Lovers Frappe thing that was at least as delicious as the same thing at Starbucks would have been (altho probably not any cheaper).

When we got home, I wanted to practice my clipping and un-clipping more, so I didn't get to play with my juicer. I think the limes will wait a little longer to be juiced.

Paul has been playing with his new toy, our refurbished Weber gas grill, almost every meal other than leftovers since we got it, which is great - no extra heat source in the house other than him going in and out of the back door to get to the grill. The air conditioner is starting to not cool down the bedroom enough (it was too hot to go back to sleep this morning, which is why I'm up so early), so hopefully Sunday Paul can install our "new" free air conditioner in the bedroom. Then we'll be set for the summer.

Other fun news of the week: I opted out of vision care insurance, but when Paul went to a new eye doctor this week and mentioned his super-itchy allergy eyes, the doctor managed to get the whole visit covered by our regular medical insurance. What a nice person! He went out of his way to save Paul some money. Of course, Paul's new glasses (his previous pair, just a year old, broke last week) cost 4 times more than the appointment, but that's OK - I'll clean out the rest of my health savings account to cover those. I might go and get myself a pair of prescription sunglasses too.

Almost forgot my other fun news: got my hair all chopped off. It's uber-short. I will post pictures soon.

Happy Friday the 13th! Paul is taking me to dinner at an undisclosed location, and then we are going to go see the new M. Night Shayamalan movie The Happening. Our first movie date was Shayamalan's Unbreakable, so he's our favorite. We're also going out to lunch at work today for my belated birthday, so I guess it will be a high-calorie day!

::edit:: 6:00 PM
I forgot my other new toy, motorcycle boots! They are a requirement for taking the PA Motorcycle Safety class, which I am officially registered for to take at the end of July! PA subsidized the course, so it's free, and they provide rather small bikes for everyone so it's not too scary for first-timers like me. I now have everything I'm required to have for the course, including my new boots (used for $25 on craigslist, from a nice woman right here in New Cumberland), helmet, and Paul's old gloves. So exciting!

Also, I juiced all my limes this afternoon, got exactly 1 cup of lime juice, so I added a cup of tequila, 1/2 c cointreau, and 1/2 c simple syrup, and now Paul and I can start off the evening right with fresh home-made margaritas!

All ready for my date night with Paul!

PS: This is hilarious if you are a member of facebook