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It comes in cans. Honestly, I feel that should be the end of the discussion. Fish does not belong in cans. I suppose if you found one rotting in a puddle of water outside your home, you might want to gingerly pick it up with a pair of tongs and stuff it in an empty pork and bean canister and dispose of it in the nearest trash bin. Other than that, I don’t think fish belong in cans—whether it’s tuna, mackerel, salmon, or of course … sardines.
Now, I know it’s good for you. But there are lots of foods that are good for you that don’t taste like tuna or maintain a metallic flavor in your mouth. (I also don’t like canned vegetables, by the way. It seems to me that canned vegetables are the ones that lost the bet in the garden. The fresh ones won and get to go to the market. The frozen ones get to maintain their shape and color. But the canned ones lost—and end up looking like they have some form of anemia.)
But certainly tuna—being a FISH—should not be in a can. And the problem is—it tastes so much like tuna! It may be the personification of the term “fishy.” Another thing I don’t like is that when you open up a can of tuna, you suddenly have two cats rubbing up against your leg, purring their lungs out. Here’s the weird thing. You don’t even OWN a cat. And then you look down and the cat looks at you and there’s an unspoken moment when you know what that feline is thinking. “Listen, bud—pretend all you want to, but we know what you got there is cat food. So hand it over.”
What can you do with tuna? There’s tuna and noodles, which requires really good noodles, sauce and cheese. Tuna comes in a distant fourth. There’s tuna salad. Now, for a long time I thought I liked tuna salad until I realized that what I really liked was eggs, pickle relish, Miracle Whip and a bit of celery. Yes, I got healed of the notion of eating tuna salad one day when I ate egg salad and realized it was better—because there was no tuna in it!
Most people put mayonnaise in tuna salad, too, which is really aggravating. I like Miracle Whip. You know what bothers me about mayonnaise? I think it’s a scam. I think some guy forgot to put two or three ingredients into his Miracle Whip, put it in jars and shipped it before he realized his mistake, so he ran to the store and re-named it and re-labeled it, placing the word “creamy” on the front—and there were people out there who were so frightened of taste that they bought it and enjoyed it. That’s my theory. I think I’m going to stick with it until someone disproves it.
But back to tuna. Some people like to have it grilled—or seared. I never thought searing was a positive thing to do to anything, and of course, grilling makes everything taste great. This summer I ate grilled peaches! Put some black lines on any particular food with a little bit of charcoal taste, and you have a delicacy.
Tuna is not a delicacy. After all, it’s in cans. And of course, now they put it in pouches. The pouches kind of freak me out too, because they kind of look like Grandpa Ford’s chewin’baccy containers. Perhaps there’s a new product there—tunabacca. With this you get bad taste and mouth cancer at the same time. Pardon me, that wasn’t really funny.
Fish has a public relations problem anyway, especially since people have started eating sushi. I’m willing to try new things—and I have eaten sushi. But I’ve broken it down to its individual parts: rice, raw fish, and grass clippings. Let me see—what makes this dish work? Even people who are avid sushi eaters might step away from the table if you removed the rice. Just the raw fish and grass clippings could be a little nasty.
But the main problem—or the ongoing one—is that fish eaters and tuna consumers are very pious. They think because you don’t like tuna that you are an unhealthy person. I love fruits and vegetables. I love lean meats. It’s tuna that bothers me. Or is it tuna in a can? Or is it tuna posing as a real ingredient in a salad?
I think it’s tuna. Tuna just annoys me. It can ruin a really good sandwich. And for those who put mustard in their tuna salad—it’s the only time that mustard wins out in a taste test.
So for me, I am not going to eat tuna. And I’m not going to deceive other people by saying that “fish is ALWAYS delicious.” Because the people who won’t eat fried fish turn around and insist that their grilled fish be covered with butter or tartar sauce. Does this food have taste, or are we just trying to disguise it behind things with which we really like to tickle our palate? I’m not so sure it’s better to eat fish when it’s not fried. And for those folks who insist that THEY just put lemon on their fish, I have to say, that particular taste is dry and makes me think that somebody put a citrus plant too near the wharf.
No tuna for me, please. I’m not usually a picky person, but tuna does tend to terrify me. It reminds me of that joke from the Rocky movie. Rocky says toAdrian, “Did you know,Adrian, you can tun-a-piano, but you can’t tun-a-fish?”
You can’t tuna fish. Exactly, Mr. Balboa.
Exactly.
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