A Mean Tuna Salad

I make a pretty good low-fat tuna salad, I think. It's good because you can't tell that it's low-fat.  It's just plain good! Here are the ingredients I use:

Dried dill, Mrs. Dash Extra Spicy, a can of water packed tuna (drained), onion powder, sweet green relish, mayo and cracked black pepper (not pictured).

I use:
1 teaspoon each of the Mrs. Dash, dill, onion powder and relish
1/2 tsp. of pepper
3 -4 tablespoons of the mayo

For the Sandwiches:

I use a bit more mayo, pepper, a bit of mustard, a slice of fat-free cheese and some lettuce:

Delish!

Egg Salad Sandwiches

I make yummy egg salad, even if I do say so myself. Yesterday I made sandwiches for us for lunch. Here's what I used:

Black pepper, celery salt, fat-free mayo, relish, Mrs. Dash Extra Spicy and onion powder. I eye-ball the amounts: a bit of this, a dash of that. Eggs are rich and so the fat-free mayo lowers the fat content but it's still delicious!

 

I find using a pastry cutter an excellent tool for chopping up the boiled eggs before I add the other ingredients.

 

Mix everything and add enough mayo to moisten. Spread on buns or bread.

Low Fat Potato Salad & Yellow Beans with Herbed Vinaigrette

I had a yummy vegetarian dinner last night—2 salads.  Both recipes were found on-line and both were adapted to my own tastes and what I had on hand in my fridge.



Potato Salad (2 servings):

Half a small bag of fingerling potatoes (about 20 of them)

1/4 cup chopped celery

1 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

1/2 tablespoon dried dill

1/4 cup nonfat buttermilk

1 tablespoon of fat-free mayo

1/2 tablespoon lime juice

2 tsp canola oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground pepper to taste

Cut potatoes into pieces and cooked them until tender. Mixed remaining ingredients in a bowl and added warm spuds, stirred and placed in the fridge for about an hour. Tasted excellent warm too. It's a cook's duty to taste as she goes!

Yellow Beans with Herb Vinaigrette: (for 2)

2 cups yellow beans, trimmed

1 teaspoons dried dill

1/2 tablespoon each of fresh copped basil and thyme

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon lime juice

1/2 teaspoon whole-grain mustard

salt & pepper to taste

I let them sit in the fridge for about 20 minutes and then served. It was a nice combination with the potato salad.

The Ciabata Project

I LOVE BREAD

They used to say when I was a kid that if you went to prison you'd have to live on mere bread and water... Then send me off to prison because I LOVE bread!

I got a recipe for no-knead ciabata bread off the Inter-webs. It was easy enough. Mix 4 cups of bread flour with 1/4 tsp yeast, 1 tsp salt and 2 cups of warm water. Mix and let it stand covered for 18 hours! The dough is quite loose and wet.

Next day it's all frothy and bubbly and you punch it down (therapeutic!) and form it into a log shape on a greased and cornmeal dusted sheet. The dough is pretty hard to handle, so you have to flour your hands and the working surface liberally with flour.  Let it rise for another 2 hours covered with a floured tea towel.

This is it after the 2 hour rise.

Finally, you bake it at 425°F for 35 to 40 minutes until it sounds hollow when you tap on it with your fist.

You let it cool completely.

This is what it looks like when it's baked:

The outside is quite crispy and crunchy, and the inside is quite chewy. YUM! I served it with a home-made oven-roasted tomato and sweet onion sauce on penne with loads of fresh basil from my garden.

This is my herb garden where I got the basil: