This is a very good tuna fish salad for people who, like myself, do not like tuna fish.

Start with a large Granny Smith apple. By any means necessary, cause it to be in small bits, grated or diced. Diced is crunchier. If you grate, do so directly into the vessel that will contain your tuna fish salad, so that you do not lose juice. As the apple becomes small bits, frequently throw the bits into the bowl or other vessel and sprinkle generously with lemon juice and vinegar, so the bits will not turn brown.

Now take a large Vidalia or whatever sweet onion you have access to, and cut it up (Episcopal chop)

Throw it into the bowl on top of the apples.

Take a small can of white tuna in water. Open it, dump it into a colander, and hold it under running water while smushing it with the fingers. This has a twofold purpose. One, even though packed in water, the tuna is an oily fish. By smushing and washing it in this way, you remove some of the residual oil. Two, if you do not love you some tuna fish, this process will get rid of some of that tuna fishy taste, and leave you with a milder flavored product. After it is rinsed well, pick up handfuls of the smushed tuna fish and squeeze. You are not only squeezing out excess water, you are squeezing out more of that residual oil, and it is that oil that is responsible for the strong flavor. You can also put lemon or lime juice on it at this point, and either squeeze it out or leave it, you are not going to put so much that you make the tuna fish wet again.

Now throw about half of the smushed, rinsed, lemoned, and squeezed dry tuna fish into the bowl. Add about a tablespoonful of black pepper, about 1/2 to 3/4 of a teaspoonful of Madras style masala, or whatever “curry powder” you have and like, some African cayenne pepper (or whatever passes for cayenne pepper in your home). This is flexible, if you prefer less flavor, use less cayenne. I usually add about a tablespoon for just a bit of seasoning, I do not intend it as a spicy dish. If you prefer, instead of or in addition to the cayenne, you can use a few drops of Yucateco habanero sauce, or chopped pungent chiles, habanero, jalapeno, or the tiny Asian ones. Or all of them. It CAN be made into a spicy dish if you wish.

Take note of the amount of tuna, apple, and onion. They should be about equal, with the tuna being the slight loser. If you have much more tuna than apple and onion, you chose a too-small apple and onion. Cause more of those things to become present.

Now comes the tricky part. My custom is to add an immoderate amount of Hellman’s mayonnaise at this point, until it is very creamy and spreadable,but if you do not wish to do that, for whatever reason, here are some options:

Add a moderate amount of Hellman’s mayonnaise

Substitute a “light” mayonnaise product for the One True Mayonnaise

Subsitute Mayonnaisette. To make this, mix a little mayonnaise with some organic blue 1% milk and a bit of lemon juice until it is the consistency of runny bottled salad dressing and tastes like mayonnaise.

Subsitute yogurt and lemon juice for half the Mayonnaise, whatever quantity that may be in your world.

Any of the above will result in a product that is very near to the recipe I am imparting. However, there are other options available to you that, while they will produce a tuna fish salad that is somewhat different from my traditional one, will still taste good and may fit your particular dietary requirements and/or peculiarities.

All NUDE!!! Do nothing. Go directly to the next step without adding doodle.

Nearly NUDE!! Add just a sprinkle of vinegar, red wine, balsamic, raspberry- walnut-sun-fried-anchovy-latte, whatever vinegar you prefer.

Make a simple vinaigrette, or use your preferred one from a bottle, go ahead and mix, and add it to taste.

Render unto Caesar! Use your preferred Caesar salad dressing.

Take a Caribbean Cruise! Add one of those Caribbean salad dressings, or make your own by throwing a little bit of Jamaican jerk sauce into either a bit of Mayonnaisette or a vinaigrette (be sure to use the ready to eat sauce, not the seasoning paste, which is intended to go onto meats that are to be cooked)

Apples and Oranges! Apples are already present, so add a bit of orange juice to your Mayonnaisette or Vinaigrette, or just by itself.

Whatever you have chosen to dress your tuna fish salad, now is the time to mix it up. This is when you will add salt if your diet permits, either to taste, or in the amount you are allowed to have. Mix it all up using a large spoon. Do not hold back. Mix it as you would a batter, you are not making crab cakes. Add the rest of the tuna in small amounts, until the taste is right. You may be surprised to find that the other ingredients are strong enough in flavor so that you can add all the tuna fish, even though you do not like it.

Now cover the bowl and set it aside for a while. This is to give the different ingredients a little privacy to get to know each other and “marry.” After a couple of hours, uncover it and drain any little puddles of liquid. Let it sit a while longer. Re-drain off excess liquid again if necessary and/or desired.

Stir it up and taste. The flavor of apple and onion should predominate, with the tuna perceptible but not pushy, with just a hint of curry and pungent chile.

I should have pointed out at some point that you may of course add walnuts or pecans or almonds or whatever nut you prefer and have handy if you wish.

There are several ways you can serve your tuna fish salad.

Obviously, the most traditional is to make a sandwich of it, using two slices of evil white carb American Sponge bread and adding lettuce and/or thinly sliced tomatoes, if desired.

My preferred sandwich uses evil white carb flat bread, such as naan, or the supermarket product sold simply as “flat bread” which is the traditional one popular in the Middle East and Mediterranean. Just take a nice hot piece, put some tuna salad in the middle, fold over and bite.

You can also stay in that region and use it to stuff a pita. Or use either a flour tortilla, a Chinese “crepe” or one of the various commerically prepared “wraps.” Some of these have very few evil carbs.

Or you can eschew any sort of bread product and stuff a vegetable, a sweet “bell” chile or a hollowed out tomato are the most popular choices, but you can use any fruit or vegetable you are willing to hollow out and eat raw, a cucumber, a melon, an onion, an orange, go wild!

If you choose the stuffed fruit or vegetable method, you can garnish it with chopped nuts, sprigs of parsely or mint, a bit of diced tomato, if you used Caesar dressing, maybe a sprinkle of asiago, or if you made it nude or nearly, you can drizzle a bit of one of the alternative dressings described above around it on the plate, that little bit is not going to kill you.

This tuna fish salad is quite good enough to serve to company, and should you wish to make it into an elegant luncheon, I would recommend serving it in halves of sweet bell chiles, and have flatbread available, hot and wrapped in a pretty cloth for those who prefer a sandwich. Compatible side dishes include fresh asparagus, artichokes, baby green peas, fiddle head ferns, a few hearts of palm dumped on some spinach leaves, drizzled with the vinaigrette of your choice and topped with pine nuts. Especially, if you gave your tuna fish the Caribbean treatment, fried plantain slices will go nicely with it, if fried anything is permitted by your diet, but be sure to also serve one of the fresh green things, so that those who do not wish anything fried.

Thus, your table will offer great flexibility, people who wish hearty fare can have both flatbread and plantains, and those who prefer a lighter lunch can forego both and still be well-fed with the tuna fish salad and a green vegetable.

The ideal beverage for such a meal is of course, pink lemonade, which you can make with Splenda if you do not wish or should not have sugar, your guests will not know the difference, and of course the secret to any lemonade is a bit of ginger, you can use powdered, but fresh is best, serve the lemonade in crystal or clear glass white wine glasses or water tumblers, whichever of yours contain more and are prettiest, decorate the glass with a thin slice of lemon, and/or a thin slice of ginger, if you wish to be extra fancy, wet individual mint leaves and freeze them, then float a few in each glass, and for dessert, fresh fruit in whatever combination you prefer, in the familiar hollowed out melon or pineapple, with fresh (unfrozen) mint leaves tossed about randomly on and around the plate, with some sort of sauce or dip alopngside so that those who wish it can have it, and those who do not are not burdened with it.

Because this is a very low-spice meal, remember to add to the table a dish of assorted raw pungent chiles, so that your guests who prefer a bit more zing can add some.