Tuna with Tomatoes and Olives & Roasted Asparagus

All recipes are part of the Healthy Calendar adventure!.

I ruined this meal for myself. I made this the night of the Great Snowpocalypse, after my power had been out for ten hours. During the preparation, I psyched myself out so bad that the tuna was infested with some horrendous waking nightmare from being "time-temperature abused", that I couldn't eat more than two bites of the tuna. I've also decided from now on, I'm going to leave it to the experts, and only eat tuna in sushi form. Unless it's from the can, it's too expensive (for the level of tastiness) and too nerve-wracking to worry about.

It looks awesome though, doesn't it? If you're game and have functioning electronics (or gas!), here's how: First, throw down some cooking spray and saute your tuna steaks on each side for a few minutes and set aside. Add olive oil to the pan and saute an onion until it begins to brown, then reduce heat and add a can of diced tomatoes, 1/2 C. of chopped olives, and 1 T. of oregano (or 2 T. fresh!). The book suggests Kalamata olives, but I hate them with a passion, so I used plain ol' black olives. Let this mixture simmer for a few minutes, then add pepper and "one packet sugar substitute", or I guess regular sugar if you're a normie. I think the point of this is to cut down on the saltiness (correct me if I'm wrong), but I still totally threw some salt on top of it just in case. Tasted fine to me! After this, place your tunas back into the mixture and cook for a few more minutes. Due to my psychoses, I cooked the hell out of these babies, which you can probably tell by the picture. On to the asparagus!

I LOVE asparagus. LOVE LOVE LOVE IT. I can't stress enough just how awesome it is, but I'm sure it made my parents' lives easier that I was willing to eat it, because apparently a lot of kids don't. Though my dad did serve canned asparagus (bleh!), we drenched it in a homemade Hollandaise sauce (mayonnaise and butter? the paragon of health!) and all was well. My personal preferred method is roasted fresh asparagus, with just about any topping.

On the night in question, I made roasted asparagus, sprinkled with olive oil and Parmesan cheese. It's pretty much the easiest thing ever; coat a baking dish with spray, throw in some asparagus (cleaned, ends chopped!!), throw on some toppings, and bake for fifteen! It will come out amazing and delicious.

I suspect that soon I will stop using this book (except in a sporadic sense). The money isn't really a problem anymore, since anyone with an arsenal of condiments can pull this off pretty cheap. I mainly used this book to help me plan meals and learn a thing or two about a thing or two in the cooking realm. I feel I have definitely learned a lot, but following a strict regimen is stifling my creativity. Also, I'm making some pretty heavy changes to my diet soon, and this book won't comply as much as it does now. This entry is long enough, so I'll fill you in in more detail next time!

EDIT: Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that I got a pretty famous visitor to my blog the other day:

ISP: Executive Office Of The President USA
Search Words: twirling towards freedom

Looks like SOMEBODY is a Simpsons fan! Either that or my blog is obviously so superfamous in federal circles that he decided to check it out. In reality, I'm guessing one of the interns was screwing around one day and found my blog, realized it had nothing to do with anything the name suggests, and left in less than a second! OR, they were all looking for a good laugh from this video (thanks to my friend Greg for finding this!):