Family Favorite Tuna Salad

Hard-boiled egg yolks mashed into the mayo/mustard mixture mimics the flavor of homemade mayonnaise in this delicious family favorite tuna salad with a hint of onion.

In my family, tuna salad and chicken salad are both made with hard-boiled eggs. That’s just the way we’ve always made them and I didn’t realize that not everybody did until I was fully grown up because in the south, we all add eggs.

The first time it was brought to my attention was when I made tuna party sandwiches to share at a non-profit board meeting of the American Association of Malaysia, scheduled for lunchtime. All the board members brought finger foods so we filled our plates and the meeting was called to order. 

All of a sudden, the president of the board exclaimed, “Who put tuna in their egg salad?” “On the contrary,” I responded, “I put eggs in my tuna salad! You don’t?” She declared that from then on she certainly would, and after a good laugh and a discussion about who did and didn't put eggs and where in the States we were from, we all got back to business.

Not a very scientific poll but it seemed that those from the southern United States always add eggs. Those from the north or midwest mostly don't. Please leave me a comment yay or nay on eggs in tuna salad and where you are from. I'm just curious.

Family Favorite Tuna Salad

I grate my onion so that there aren’t little crunchy bits in my tuna salad, which I abhor. Grating the onion also creates some onion juice, giving the salad a nice onion flavor throughout. If you don’t mind little crunchy bits, feel free to mince the onion instead and, bonus, you won’t have to share your tuna salad with me.  

Ingredients

4 eggs, hard-boiled, cooled and peeled

1/2 cup or 115g mayonnaise

1 tablespoon yellow mustard

1/4 small onion

2 cans (5 oz or 142g) tuna chunks in brine or spring water

1/4-1/2 teaspoon cayenne, depending on your spice level

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon (or to taste) fine sea salt

Method

Cut the egg whites around the circumference of the yolks. Remove the yolks and put them in a small mixing bowl. Set aside the whites.

Mash the egg yolks with a fork, adding in a few spoons of the mayonnaise.

Once the yolks are relatively smooth, add in the rest of the mayonnaise and mustard. Mix until completely homogeneous. 

Grate the onion, making sure that you catch any juice which should also go into the mixture. You can do this on a saucer with a regular grater or directly into the mayo bowl with a microplane. 

Add the black pepper, cayenne and salt and stir.

Using a sharp knife, cut the egg whites into irregular pieces, adding them to the bowl. Stir well. 

Open your cans of tuna and use the lids to drain the water, squeezing a little. You don’t want the tuna too wet or the tuna salad will be runny. 

Add the tuna to the mayo bowl. 

Stir gently to mix it in. It’s nice to still have some small chunks of tuna so try not to mash it too much. 

Taste the tuna salad. Add a little more salt and pepper, if desired. 

This tuna salad is perfect as a sandwich filling but it can also be served with crackers or used to fill a ripe tomato or an avocado half. 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing sandwich recipes to celebrate National Sandwich Month. Many thanks to our host, Camilla of Culinary Cam. Check out the links below.

• Caramel Pulled Pork Banh Mi Sandwiches by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Chicken Caesar Wraps by Amy's Cooking Adventures
• Family Favorite Tuna Salad by Food Lust People Love
• Grilled Cheese Extra Ordinary by Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• Hung Curd Veggie Sandwich by Sneha's Recipe
• Pie Iron Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches by Day in the Life on the Farm
• Sunflower Pesto Turkey Sandwich by Our Good Life

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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Easy Pastina Soup

This Easy Pastina Soup is comfort food for when you are under the weather and need something delicious, rich and nourishing, made with chicken stock and vegetables, and, of course, tiny pasta aka pastina.

It's been quite a while so I can’t remember if it was me or someone else in my immediate family that was feeling under the weather, in fact, it might have even been my neighbor. But I was texting with a dear friend and she sent me the recipe she said she always makes when her family is sick. 

I had all of the ingredients so I made it right away. It was sooo good that it became one of my favorite go-to soup recipes whenever we are feeling poorly as well. The soup is rich and full of vegetables and flavor, a true delight with the tiny pasta aka pastina.

Easy Pastina Soup

This soup is very forgiving so I haven’t given exact weights for the vegetables. Aside from the garlic, the amounts of the other veggies should be more or less similar but if you have a little more carrot and a little less celery, don’t stress over it. That said, the one onion in my pantry was tiny, so I also used a shallot to make up the difference. 

Ingredients 

10 1/2 cups or 2 1/2 liters chicken stock

1 yellow onion

3 celery ribs

3 carrots

4 garlic cloves

salt as needed

freshly ground black pepper

1 cup or 200g pastina, drained (any small pasta shape, such as orzo, little stars, or tiny macaroni noodles – macaroni will weigh less, being hollow)

Parmesan or Pecorino Romano to serve

Method

Peel and chop your carrots and onion. Peel and slice your garlic. Chop the celery ribs. 

Add the stock to a large pot and heat over high heat. Add the onion, celery, carrots and garlic. Bring the contents to a boil.

Once the broth is boiling, reduce the heat to medium-low and semi cover the pot with a lid. 

Cook for 45-60 minutes or until the veggies are all super soft and the quantity of liquid has reduced. Taste for seasoning and adjust with some salt, if needed. 

If you have a hand blender, remove the pot from the stove and puree all of the vegetables directly in the pot.

If you don’t, use a slotted spoon to transfer the veggies to a blender, along with a couple of ladles full of broth. Blend until the mixture is smooth, 1 to 2 minutes. Return the blended mixture back to the pot of broth and stir. 

Give the whole pot a few generous grinds of black pepper. 

Meanwhile, in another pot, boil the pastina in salted water. Drain and return to the pot to keep warm. 

To serve, add a generous serving spoonful of the cooked pastina to the bottom of a bowl then ladle the soup on top. 

Sprinkle with some grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano. (I totally forgot this step for the photos!)

Enjoy!

Welcome to the 16th edition of Alphabet Challenge 2025, brought to you by the letter P. Many thanks to Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm for organizing and creating the challenge. Check out all the P recipes below:

• Food Lust People Love: Easy Pastina Soup
• Sneha’s Recipe: Grilled Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich
• Jolene’s Recipe Journal: Peas and Pepper Pasta Salad
• Karen’s Kitchen Stories: Pasta and Pea Soup
• Mayuri’s Jikoni: Pineapple Salad
• Blogghetti: Easy Pumpkin Pie Crescent Rolls
• A Messy Kitchen: Maple Pecan Fudge
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Pasta with Preserved Lemon
• Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice: Peach Crumble Pound Cake (Cake Mix Recipe)
• Culinary Cam: Brunede Kartofler (Danish Caramel Potatoes)
• Magical Ingredients: Pepper and Cheese Dip
  
  
  
  

Here are my posts for the 2025 alphabet challenge, thus far:

A: Roasted Asparagus Soup

B: Blistered Sugar Snap Peas

C. Jersey Royal Chicken Chorizo Traybake 

D. Small Batch Dried Apricot Jam 

E. Whipped Espresso Cream 

F. Fish Sauce Roasted Chicken 

G. Extra Herby Gremolata 

H. Smoked Herring Spread 

I.  Fresh Cherry Ice Cream 

J. Small Batch Strawberry Jam 

K. Kiwi Tomato Feta Salad 

L. Lobster Butter 

M. Milk-Roasted Chicken 

N. Nocciolata Swirl Meringues 

O. Jersey Octopus Ceviche 

P. Easy Pastina Soup – this post! 

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Milk-Roasted Chicken

This Milk-Roasted Chicken is made with the deliciously odd combination of lemon and milk which creates the most tender chicken and a divine sauce. Add mushrooms and baby new potatoes for a one-pot meal.

I first started making a version of this chicken after watching Jamie Oliver’s show Oliver’s Twist way back in 2002. The episode was called Big Grub for Big Boys and Jamie was cooking for his local rugby team. 

The original calls for sage instead of tarragon and fewer cloves of garlic, and no mushrooms or baby new potatoes so you could make this without them but I do love a one-pot dinner. 

Milk-Roasted Chicken

This recipe, as mentioned above, is adapted from one of Jamie Oliver’s. It can also be found in his cookbook, Happy Days with the Naked Chef. Below I have given the amounts of mushrooms and potatoes I used this time. Know that if you want to add more or less of either, it’s all still good. Can’t find fresh tarragon? Use your favorite fresh herb. Thyme or even rosemary would be delicious.

 

Ingredients

1 whole chicken (about 3 lbs or 1.5 kg)  

Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 

4 oz or 113g butter 

1 cinnamon stick 

2 big sprigs fresh tarragon 

1 lemon

8 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed 

2 1/4 cups or 540ml milk

5 1/2 oz or 156g baby button mushrooms

1 lb or 450g baby new potatoes

Method

Preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C, and find a snug-fitting pot for the chicken. Cross the chicken’s legs and secure them together with string or silicone bands. 

Season the chicken generously all over with salt and pepper, and fry it in the butter, turning the chicken to get an even color all over, until golden. 

Start breast down and don’t try to turn it until you can move it slightly, about 7-8 minutes. If you try to turn it too soon, before it’s lovely and brown, the skin will stick to the bottom of the pot.

Remove from the heat, put the chicken on a plate. 

Jamie says at this point, “throw away the butter left in the pot which will leave you with tasty sticky goodness at the bottom of the pan, which will give you a lovely caramel flavor later on.” I must confess, I just couldn’t do it. 

Throwing away butter goes against my very ethos regarding cooking. Have you ever seen a French chef throw out butter? Oh, hell, no. They add more! 

Strip the leaves off the tarragon and set aside a small pile for garnish later. Use a potato peeler to remove the lemon zest thinly in big pieces. Peel the garlic and hit the cloves with the side of a knife to crush them slightly. 

Juice your lemon, but leave a little bit in one rind for squeezing over the cooked chicken.

 

Add the cinnamon stick, bigger pile of tarragon, lemon zest and garlic to the pot. Give it all a quick stir. 

Put the chicken on top, breast side up and pour the milk and lemon juice around the sides. 

Add in the cleaned mushrooms.

Roast the chicken in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes. Baste with the cooking juice from time to time. 

Add in the new potatoes and roast for a further 45 minutes. 

To serve, squeeze the last of the lemon juice over the chicken and sprinkle on the reserved tarragon.

If you serve from a platter instead of the pot, make sure to include the juices from the pan in a gravy boat on the side!

Enjoy! 

Welcome to the 13th edition of Alphabet Challenge 2025, brought to you by the letter M. Many thanks to Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm for organizing and creating the challenge. Check out all the M recipes below:

• Food Lust People Love: Milk Roasted Chicken with New Potatoes and Mushrooms
• Blogghetti: Movie Night Charcuterie Board 
• Sneha’s Recipe: Mango Bread Pastry - No Bake Dessert 
• Jolene’s Recipe Journal: Mocha Milkshake 
• Karen’s Kitchen Stories: Maple Pecan Madeleines 
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Steak and Mushroom Bites 
• A Messy Kitchen: Mini Lemon Cupcakes with Marionberry Frosting (Doctored Cake Mix)
• Mayuri’s Jikoni: Moong Dal Salad | Kosambari
• Magical Ingredients: Mint Mascarpone Dip 
• Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice: Pineapple Ketchup Ground Turkey Skillet Meatballs 
• Culinary Cam: Mini Peach Galettes

Here are my posts for the 2025 alphabet challenge, thus far:

A: Roasted Asparagus Soup

B: Blistered Sugar Snap Peas

C. Jersey Royal Chicken Chorizo Traybake 

D. Small Batch Dried Apricot Jam 

E. Whipped Espresso Cream 

F. Fish Sauce Roasted Chicken 

G. Extra Herby Gremolata 

H. Smoked Herring Spread 

I.  Fresh Cherry Ice Cream 

J. Small Batch Strawberry Jam 

K. Kiwi Tomato Feta Salad 

L. Lobster Butter 

M. Milk-Roasted Chicken – this post! 

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Rustic Baked Potato Soup

Better than Panera’s, (and so says my mother-in-law) this rustic baked potato soup starts with actual baked potatoes for more flavor and texture. It’s creamy and more-ish! 

My wonderful mother-in-law doesn’t cook much for herself anymore, especially now after recovering from two successive broken legs (first the left, then when that healed, the right!) and two and a half months in rehab. So we’ve been cooking and bringing her meals to reheat as she needs them. 

Occasionally she asks me to run to the nearby Panera to pick her favorite rustic baked potato soup. It’s not a big serving still costs $7.99 but, hey, she needs the calories and nutrition so I would never object. But then it occurred to me that I could probably make a copy cat version MUCH cheaper. The great news is she likes mine better! Win-win.

Rustic Baked Potato Soup

The Panera Bread soup upon which this is modeled offers two options for topping, extra (or less) Asiago cheese and the addition of bacon for an extra charge. I’ve never added the bacon when ordering for my mother-in-law so I won’t do it here but feel free you want some! We aren't peeling these potatoes so choose a variety with thin skins like white or golden potatoes. If you must use russets, you might want to peel them. It won’t be the same though. 

Ingredients

2 lbs or 900g white or golden potatoes

Olive oil

4 cups or 960ml chicken stock

2 tablespoons butter

1 white onion

2 cloves garlic

4 oz or 113g cream cheese

1 green onion, green part only, sliced

1/2 teaspoon salt, if necessary (some chicken stock is pretty salty and that’s enough salt)

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

To garnish: Asiago cheese, grated  

Method

Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C and line a pan with silicone mat or foil for easy clean up.

Scrub the potatoes clean and cut them in half lengthwise. Oil the silicone mat or foil with a good drizzle of olive oil then place the potatoes cut side down. Use a basting brush to oil the tops of the potatoes. 

Roast in your preheated oven for 15 minutes. Turn the potatoes cut side up and roast for another 15 minutes. 

While the potatoes are roasting, peel and chop your garlic and onion. 

Remove the potatoes from the oven and leave to cool. 

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and sauté until the onion is translucent. I cover my pot because I find it helps soften the onion more quickly. 

Chop the potatoes into chunks. 

Add the potatoes and chicken stock to the pot. 

Bring to a boil then simmer for about 12 to 15 minutes by which time the potatoes should start to break down, if they haven’t already. 

Use a potato masher to mash some of the potatoes. 

Give the soup a good stir. If you like a thicker soup, mash more! The Panera soup does have some potato chunks so I tried to match that texture. 

Add the cream cheese and the sliced green onion and stir until the cheese has melted. Add the salt, if needed, and black pepper.

Serve garnished with shredded Asiago cheese.

Enjoy!

It’s Sunday FunDay and we are celebrating moms ahead of Mother’s Day in the United States next weekend, sharing recipes in honor of the great women in our lives. Many thanks to our host, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out the links below. 

• Edible Gelatin Balloons for Cake Decorating from Amy's Cooking Adventures
• Guava Cheese from Sneha's Recipe
• Haldi Doodh Masala Spiced Cupcakes with Burnt Caramel Buttercream from Culinary Cam
• Honey Mustard Chicken Strips from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Pistachio Saffron Muffins from Mayuri's Jikoni
• Rustic Baked Potato Soup from Food Lust People Love
• Shortbread Lemon Squares from Our Good Life

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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Banana Peanut Butter Cookies

Simple to make, chewy and delicious, these banana peanut butter cookies are perfect with a glass of cold milk or a cup of hot tea. They'd be great for breakfast too! 

I give the actual recipe I used for the cookies in my photos but I have made these many times. What I discovered is that no banana is exactly the same weight you need. 

Based on the original ingredients for one batch of 16, here are the instructions to personalize the recipe according to the weight of your bananas. You need a kitchen scale. 

Simply peel your very ripe bananas and weigh them in grams. Divide the number of grams by 75. Now times that result by 160. That is how many grams of peanut butter you need for your weight of bananas. Times that banana number by 31 to figure out how much flour you need. Easy! 

Banana Peanut Butter Cookies

I tried this recipe with natural peanut butter without sugar and even with a very ripe banana, the cookies just weren’t sweet enough. Use your favorite peanut butter that does have sugar added. I like Jif.

Ingredients for 16 cookies

1/3 cup or 75g very ripe banana

1/2 cup, rounded, or 160g smooth peanut butter (with sugar)

1/4 cup or 31g flour

Powdered sugar for pressing with fork

Sugar for sprinkling, if desired.

Method

Preheat your oven to 350° or 180°C and line a baking pan with a silicone liner or baking parchment. 

In a mixing bowl, whisk the ripe banana until smooth. 

Add in the peanut butter and flour and mix thoroughly. 

Use tablespoon to apportion into cookies. 

Roll into balls.

Dip the tines of your fork into powdered sugar and press down in a cross pattern. 

Sprinkle with more sugar for decoration, if desired.

Bake in your preheated oven for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. 

Remove the cookies from the oven and leave to cool. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before storing in an airtight container. 

Enjoy!

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are celebrating National Tea Day. Many thanks to our host, Camilla of Culinary Cam who encouraged us to share our favorite recipes that use tea as an ingredient or anything you would serve at a tea party. Check out the links below. 

• Banana Peanut Butter Cookies by Food Lust People Love
• Caramel Apple Tea Rub for Pork by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Chamomile Spring Veggie Chowder by Culinary Cam
• Veggie Mini Vol-au-Vents by Sneha's Recipe

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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