Hap­py Birth­day John!

Many of you will be famil­iar with the annu­al tus­sle between my beloved and me. As Feb­ru­ary 27 approach­es, my dai­ly query, “What are you in the mood for, for din­ner?” gets the response more and more fre­quent­ly, “Tuna casse­role.” I know what you’re think­ing. Some­thing unprint­able, prob­a­bly. I myself am devot­ed to tuna. It’s as like­ly as not to find me eat­ing tuna sal­ad — with pine nuts, lemon zest, sun­flower seeds, chick peas, loads of cel­ery — three times a week for lunch. But HOT tuna? No. Tuna steaks, per­haps. But to open a can of tuna and make it HOT? It’s tan­ta­mount to cook­ing cat food. But every Feb­ru­ary, the top­ic comes up.

It’s a cher­ished child­hood clas­sic for John (thanks, Rose­mary!). And every once in awhile over the past 20 years or so I have caved. My sis­ter patient­ly pro­vid­ed the recipe one year, and it was com­plete­ly suc­cess­ful, in that it was com­plete­ly repul­sive. Hot tuna! Then there was the year that I agreed silent­ly to make it as a sur­prise… to greet him when he returned from a long busi­ness trip on his birth­day… and the sur­prise was sup­plant­ed by an even more impor­tant one: I found out I was expect­ing Avery. On his birth­day! On that occa­sion we were so over­come that I nev­er thought to cook the noo­dles ahead of bak­ing the casse­role, and every SNICK of liq­uid from the tuna and the canned mush­room soup (I know, I know) was absorbed by them and the con­sis­ten­cy of the whole dish some­where between wet woolen socks and dry­ing clay. You can imag­ine. Only also SMELLY.

Well, today I gave in once more. Would you believe there’s a video on how to make tuna casse­role? I real­ly think you should watch it, if only for the sound effects: wait till the end when the cook tips the nox­ious mix­ture into the bak­ing dish. The suck­ing sound is like some primeval mud let­ting go a trea­sured fos­sil, while it was still wet and alive.

So be it.

He is my trea­sured hus­band, albeit with high­ly ques­tion­able taste buds. He ate ful­ly half the fin­ished dish for lunch, which, as one of my best friends point­ed out, “solves half of THAT prob­lem.” He can eat the oth­er half for lunch tomor­row. And the debate is over for anoth­er year. Hap­py Birth­day, my dear.