As in the soup, because I made my own cream of mushroom– for a very specific purpose. This week I had my first tuna-noodle casserole. I did not grow up with casseroles. My dad never liked a one-pot meal, and my mom didn’t really care, so I had a childhood free of Durkee French Fried Onions. Frankly, I never liked tuna fish from a can until I was in college, so a tuna casserole was not in my culinary lexicon.
But recently my mother started making them for herself . Maybe she was finally feeling that empty-nest syndrome, or maybe she was hearkening back to her own childhood in the 1950s, filled with tuna-noodle casseroles. Either way she started to rave about them. At first I was appalled; this casserole always sounded like a train wreck to me. But then, as I started [...]

When I was young there were two sandwiches which I absolutely could not stand– egg salad and tuna fish. Although their lumpy appearances definitely did not appeal, it was above all their lingering odors that were so detestable to the sensitivity of my young nose.
I would head out to the kitchen, teeth brushed, shoelaces tied, and shirt tucked in (because yes, I was one of those never-play-in-the-mud, proper children), to pour myself a bowl of cereal. Before I even arrived in the kitchen, the sulfuric smell of my mother mashing a half dozen eggs, mixed with coarsely chopped dill pickles for her egg salad, would hit me like a ton of bricks . A proper, though never meek child, I would fuss about the smell making me gag first thing in the morning. Pleasant.
Then there was school lunchtime. I would pull out my peanut butter and [...]

How much do I love imported, canned tuna in olive oil? I will tell you, it’s a lot. No single, other food that I can think of brings a meal to glowing, bourgie status with just a can opener and a little bit of creativity. But what do you do when confronted with the aforementioned can, a basket of new spring groceries, and a baguette that has seen its better days? Make a panzanella, or a nicoise, no– a panzanella. Well which ever it was, it was delicious.
I had gone a little ga-ga at the market. With so much beautiful produce, how could I not? Peppery, bright green baby arugula, no plucking necessary, acted as my base. Juicy, red-ripe tomatoes, no larger than a golf ball, screaming for me to cook (or not to cook, as the case may be) with them. Shavings of crisp bulbs of fennel, their anisette [...]