Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The Only Title I Can Come Up With: My Father Cornered the Canned Tuna Market

I am the youngest of 5 of a very spread out family. By the time I was 11, 2 sisters were married and my brother moved to Arizona never to return East.

YogaGirl and I lived under the same roof until I was 13 and one thing I remember is my father's trips to the grocery store. Every week my mom would painstakingly create a grocery list off her menu plan for the week (I don't know why I chose the word 'painstakingly' because I can remember we had the same weekly menu throughout my years in high school)....Anyway, dad would go off to the local grocery store and ALWAYS forget something on the list. Oh. My. God. You think he'd learn for sanity reasons that missing something off the list would send my mother into a tailspin. They would bicker back and forth about the stupid list and why couldn't he remember the chicken. I have to admit, after looking at the list when I was about 6 years old, I couldn't understand it either. It was right there - chicken. To this day, I wonder why he always forgot one thing, but always managed to replace it with cans of tuna fish.

Chicken wasn't tuna fish. My dad didn't bring lunch and even if I hadn't made my own lunches from 1st grade on, I never would have brought tuna fish to school. It stunk up the whole locker. Fitting in is hard enough, but imagine if you set yourself up to smell like tuna all day long? That is just ridiculous.

I can't speak for any other siblings other than YogaGirl, but I remember always having cans of tuna on hand. Not just one or two cans, but like 10 or 12. I swear that stockpile never went down.

As an adult with my own home, I have a pantry and have noticed, I inherited the stockpiling of the tuna fish gene. I have cans and cans, but no damn mayo!

I swear, I'm always running out of mayo. I wish I didn't because a tuna fish sandwich on toasted bread is pretty tasty.

10 comments:

Brian Miller said...

ha...i like a good tuna fish sandwich...i remember all the cans of tuna at our house too...guess they figured if the russians came we would at least have tuna that kept...you know...smiles.

Lora said...

my husband mixes his with salad dressing. preferably italian, but I've seen him do it with whatever we have.

I'm not saying it's good because I've never tried it. But he loves it.

JeannetteLS said...

Oh, goodie. I can blame YOUR father, because I do this, too. I suddenly think I need tuna... and I fix myself tuna sandwiches, perhaps three times a year.

I'm not the only one? I shall go scratch this off the list of things that make Jeannette certifiably insane, of course, because, well, if a couple of other people do this, then I'm fine! Thank you.

DB said...

There is nothing like a good tuna fish sandwich, preferably with some chopped celery, and toasted bread. I have the family gene to stockpile tuna as well. You just can't go wrong....

YogaGirl

Joanna Jenkins said...

No mayo!!! Gotta always have mayo in da house!

xo jj

So. Cal. Gal said...

I have to be in the mood for tuna and I hate the taste of mayo. So you can imagine how long it's been since I had a tuna sandwich.

And NOTHING smells worse than a fried egg sandwich. We always thought the girl never showered til a teacher identified the stink for what it was.

Little Ms Blogger said...

Brian - EXACTLY!!!! Thanks for the answer.

Lora - ummm. Not sure how I feel about that one. I don't mix dijon mustard with the mayo, so maybe it would be good.

JeannetteLS - I'm glad to hear it wasn't just my family.

Donna - that is the way I like my tuna sandwiches.

Joanna Jenkins - went shopping after writing this post and picked up some mayo!

So. Cal Gal - you're right about the fried egg sandwich. It's odd because scrambled eggs don't have that same smell.

DSS said...

My mother would pack tuna fish sandwiches for me, and a HUGE whole claussen dill pickle. Wonder why I wasn't very popular back then?

lacochran's evil twin said...

I think your father enjoyed getting a rise out of your mother.

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