Bits and Pieces Make a Whole...

Good morning everyone! I am so happy to report that, when you read this, I will be back in Virginia with my family for a week-long visit! I'm so excited!!! In case you couldn't tell. :-)


Anyhoo, as for the food, this week celebrates the great sport of Pantry Diving. Oh yes, that fabulous activity where you riffle through your shelves and cupboards, hoping to be struck by a culinary epiphany. Well, I can safely say that that didn't happen to me, which is why the Internet was invented. Two things I had a lot of were tuna and potatoes. My faithful Cookware Deluxe program failed me here, so I turned to what is possibly the largest conglomeration of recipes on the Web: Cooks.com. If you haven't discovered, this fabulous site, I encourage you to visit. I guarantee that you can find anything on there. When I typed in "tuna potato", I actually got back nine pages of results. Most of them were scallops (or is it escallop?) and casseroles, but what really interested me were the Baked Tuna-Stuffed Potatoes. There are a lot of variations of this dish on Cooks.com, so I made a few tweaks of my own and renamed it.

Tuna Potato Boats

8 lg. baking potatoes
2 tbsp. butter
2 (7 oz.) cans tuna, drained
1 tbsp. grated onion (I used reconstituted onion flakes)
1 tbsp. chopped parsley (didn't have that, so I used dried marjoram)
10 3/4 oz. can condensed cheddar cheese soup (didn't have this either, so I used cream of chicken)
1/4 tsp. paprika
2 drops Tabasco (I don't have this and don't like heat, so I skipped this all together)
1/4 tsp. salt
4 slices processed American cheese (I used grated cheddar instead)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Wash potatoes. Rub skins all over with butter. Prick with fork. Bake on oven rack 1 1/2 hours or until tender. Meanwhile, in medium bowl, combine tuna, onion, paprika, Tabasco and salt. Toss with fork to break up tuna and to blend well. Remove 1 inch slice from top of each potato. Scoop out inside of potato from each slice and from potato itself, leaving a shell. Add potato to tuna mixture, tossing to mix well. Spoon lightly into potato shells, mounding high. Top each with 1/2 slice of cheese. Place in shallow baking pan. Bake 15 minutes or until filling is hot and cheese is melted. Makes 8 servings.

Okay, here's why I really like this recipe. 1) It's cheap. 2) It's really versatile. 3) It's super tasty and can actually be eaten with your hands or with utensils. Mike was kind enough to hollow out the potatoes for me, which were actually pretty stiff after baking. Of course there was more filling than could fit in the potato shells, so we hollowed out the tops and filled them too. It was almost a complete meal, and I could have made it so just by adding some peas or corn or something to the filling.

A fun activity for your kids might be to let them pick their own stuffing. All in all, I consider this a brilliant success and an excellent find. I just hope you are as happy with it as I was. Thanks for reading.