11 May Thursday

Earlier this week, I made this:

Strawberry rhubarb pudding cake. It wasn’t really any of those things, but it was nice. Nice. The rhubarb had been dully spayed and neutered, the strawberries had nothing to offer in the first place, the pudding got too hard, and the cake was too soft. However, it was/is yummy. It is particularly good heated. It is a breakfast slightly wet coffee cake.

It has been a quiet week. Like, flavorless strawberries was the nadir. For lunch today, tuna melt. It’s hard, because it is not very interesting but perfecting a sandwich is important to a man. I do have ideas. Why not butter the pan? Some people, not mentioning Jacques Pepin, butter the bread before putting it in the pan. Silly. Melt the butter gently in the pan, then add the bread and swirl it round and round until all the butter is absorbed. Add a little shredded cheddar on each piece of bread and toast for about three minutes, keep it gentle. After three minutes, dollop three tablespoons of celery rich tuna salad onto the center, the center, of one of the toasts. Sing one chorus of Amazing Grace at 89 to the quarter note then flip the toast that does not have tuna salad onto the one that does.

The next step is crucial, that’s why I started another paragraph. You should have in the pan one slice of buttered toasted with melted cheese and a plop of tuna salad topped by another slice of melted cheese toast. Do not, repeat, do not flatten the sandwich with a spatula causing the tuna salad to burst out the side and cook and turn gray and rubbery and taste like cooked tuna fish. Take the spatula, and carefully, carefully, flip the sandwich over without smashing it down. Turn off the heat, and allow the cheese on the higher end of the sandwich to drape over the tuna salad. It is finished.

The celery is crisp, the tuna, robed in mayonnaise and Dijon mustard, is soft and piquant. The toast is crisp, the cheese is weeping. The pepper is vivacious and persnickety, the pickle downright wanton. I don’t have pictures, it was too good, too fleeting.