dinner – ♥The Barbosphere♥

Let us discuss tuna salad. (Know that I hate when I am looking up recipes && have to go through one million words just to get to the bottom, && sadly, I don’t have the “skip to recipe button”.)

My manager at work && I talk about tuna salad a lot. Not because we are obsessed with tuna salad, we just: one, like to talk about food, two, enjoy a good tuna salad. However, our ideas of tuna salad differs, a lot. For her she uses tuna, Hellman’s mayonnaise, pepper, and pickle relish. For me?

Tuna Salad Ingredients – in my humble opinion.

Tuna, Mayonnaise (usually whatever jar I have that is almost empty), mustard, purple onion, dill relish, salt (not pictured), pepper && eggs.

The way I make it usually becomes a very high talked about subject. I’m not sure if it’s the eggs, mustard, or the fact that I don’t always use name brand mayonnaise.

We also get on the subject of goulash – which she said she has never had, && most tell me “you make it differently than I do”. That’s okay.

It’s okay if we don’t cook the same. It’s what makes food interesting. Seeing how one person differs from another, even if we are making the exact same dish. Tuna salad, for example, is one. Last Tuesday we got on the subject because I had wondered over to the bakery at work && got their tuna salad, which is tuna and mayonnaise. Which is fine. It gets me protein, and I like mayonnaise and tuna.

One of the topics of discussion is the fact that I put egg in mine. Here’s the issue, I think I’ve discussed it before, but I don’t know where or why I got the idea to scramble my eggs. I will put butter in a skillet, drop the eggs in and scramble them before adding them into the tuna. The only thing that I can think of is that one day I was making myself tuna salad, too lazy to boil them, so I just scrambled them? Possibly. I do know that no one in my family has ever scrambled their eggs, they boil them – but they do say different people cook differently. Maybe this is just something I do?

Future-ex-boyfriend doesn’t complain. I just have to let it sit in the icebox for a bit because he doesn’t like hot tuna.

I did eight cans of tuna, eight eggs, 2/3 purple onion (yes, I refuse to call it red, it’s not red, it’s purple), eight tablespoons of dill relish (don’t do sweet), eight tablespoons of mayonnaise (which you can do more if you like it creamier). I normally top it off with pepper, but I made this batch for work (because they all said they’ve never eaten it like I make it, so I made it, && cooking for people makes me happy – which I need a little of lately) and one of my employees can’t eat pepper. I figure I’ll tell them to pepper it when they get some. I pulled future-ex-boyfriend some in his own bowl for tomorrow, which I peppered for him, && tasted – perfect!

Then just mix it really well.

&& for anyone curious, the bottle is Milo’s Zero Calorie Sweet Tea (yellow bottle). I approve that tea. Them && sriracha, if I ever became a popular blogger, they could sponsor me. (Please note, I’m chuckling while typing that.)

So, in conclusion, maybe I do make my tuna salad weird. But I have yet to really have a complaint. Only ones who complain are the ones who don’t like tuna, && I don’t know why they be eating it when they don’t like it. Ya’ know?

Hey! At least it doesn’t have raisins in it, right? Because that’s apparently a white person thing to do. Just add raisins to everything. && yes, I know that was a joke from Saturday Night Live that people took way too seriously.

1 Can Tuna
1 Tablespoon Mayonnaise
1 teapsoon mustard
Small Handful of diced PURPLE onion
1 Tablespoon DILL relish
1 Egg, I scramble, feel free to boil
Salt && Pepper to taste. I really LOVE pepper, so I probably use more than you will.

Mix all ingredients really well. Serve cold.

It’s not a secret that I want a food truck. I’m actually very vocal about it. Have been for years. But I have some thoughts.

Tonight I took my brother, his girlfriend && their two year old to dinner – including boyfriend. So it was four adults, one two year old child. Children, usually under a certain age, is free. They don’t eat much. We got the bill, I looked at it – $72.00. I sit for a moment thinking why is this so high? This is with the understanding that we went to a buffet. (I’m possibly still living with the mindset of someone in the late 90’s to early 00’s where one person was $7.50 at a buffet.)

Let’s get out of that mindset.

I understand food prices have gone up. I would never try to deny that. So I understand the price per adult is going to be higher than $7.50 now. What I wasn’t understanding – four adult drinks & a child drink – $15.00. First – if a child eats free, their drink should be free. Am I wrong for thinking like that? Especially if they order a tea. Tea is CHEAP. All tea is cheap. But let’s say that a child drink is half the price of an adult drink – four adult drinks && one kid drink – $15.

On the way home I was talking to Boyfriend about the prices. He told me it’s because most people don’t look at the price of drinks so it’s an easy up sale (y’all should pay more attention to how much your drink is). More profit. I understand the concept of profit. People need a profit or their business doesn’t work. I get that. I understand that. But at the same time – 3$ for a drink. I even will take in consideration it’s a buffet so people sit there for a while drinking. But even tonight, I ordered a Diet Pepsi, I drank half the glass, the waitress refilled it – then I drank that whole glass. $3.00

Then we started talking about selling 20 ounce bottles. I told him I don’t understand why people sell those for $3.50 – he said “up sale” again. Let’s discuss that for a moment. You can buy a 6 pack of bottles at Wal-Mart for $8.00. I sell each for $1.50. That’s a $10 profit. Why do I need a $34 profit?

Maybe with my whole mindset it’s a good thing I don’t have a business. From the sounds of it I may go bankrupt very fast. I just figured – let’s say I get the food truck && I sell bottles of soda/water. I sell them for $1.50 – shouldn’t my food make up the costs of what I may or may not lose? Especially if I just buy bottled drinks. I mean I’m not going to argue about prices of food. I understand the reason behind the hike in food prices in businesses && I also understand I would have to have a good profit off those. But at the same time, why would someone sell a baked potato for $10.00?

The place I work has restaurants inside of it. One of them I used to go to and buy a loaded baked potato. I would like to mention it wasn’t that long ago. I could get a baked potato with sour cream, green onions, butter, cheese && bacon bits for $4.50 with my work discount. ((I’ll make sure to add that I get a 20% discount eating at the restaurants are my job. Small perk, if you will.)) So with that discount – $4.50 for a loaded baked potato. Last month, a co-worker went to that place && got a loaded baked potato. The potato was smaller than it used to be with the same toppings – $10.00 with our 20% discount.

Potatoes are cheap. It’s probably one of the cheapest vegetables you can buy. You can get a 10 pound bag of potatoes right now, for $5.00 at Wal-Mart. Logically, I know that the company doesn’t shop at Wal-Mart. So I understand that the company they purchase through is going to go up a little on the price. So let’s say 10 pounds for $10.00. There is usually about 25 potatoes in the bag. Let’s do math. You spent $10.00 on a bag of potatoes that have 25 potatoes in the bag – you sell the potatoes for $4.50 (&& that’s included with the toppings I mentioned). That is approximately a $113.00 profit with just potatoes. Let’s take in the sour cream, green onions, cheese… what else did I say? Sour cream… oh! Butter.

Humor me. Let’s do some math. Now, keep in mind, I’m using Wal-Mart prices because it’s where I shop.
Potatoes – $10.00 a bag – approximately 25 potatoes – which means each tato is $0.40.
Sour cream – $1.88 – it’s 16 ounces/so we’d do half an ounce per tato – gives 32 servings for $0.06 each.
Shredded Cheese – $7.48 for 32 ounces/so we’d do half a ounce – gives 46 servings for $0.16 each.
Butter (I buy imperial sticks) – 4 sticks per box/each box is 32 ounces so you’d have 36 servings for $0.04 each.
Green Onions – they come in bunches usually of about 5 onions, half an onion each, 10 servings for $0.09 each

$0.40+$0.06+$0.16+$0.04+$0.09=$1.56 – price per tato with toppings.
25 tatos x 1.56= $39.00 for the whole bag of tatos with toppings.
Let’s say we sell them for $4.50. 25 x $4.50= $112.50 for 25 servings of tatos.
$112.50-$39.00= $73.50 profit

I’m not business major (although I was in college for business && did really well in accounting) so I could be totally wrong on how the profit works. I also realize, there’s more to it. I know there are other bills and other factors, but I’m just looking at the tato. I’m just saying I don’t understand why a company would sell a baked tato for $10. Yes, I know people want the bigger profit. I understand that. I just don’t understand…

Let’s say I make the best baked tato ever! Word gets out about how good that baked tato is. It’s fantastic. Brings me in more people – so I sell more tatos… my profit is higher. Or am I dense for thinking like that?

I don’t know, maybe I just shouldn’t look into having my own business? It’s not like I’m going to try to sell a cheese burger, fries & a drink for $1.50 – I understand how prices are. I understand that it would need to be at least $10 for that. BUT WHY A TATO?

Tag: dinner

Recipe #1: Tuna Salad

WHY A TATO?