My first exposure to Tuna and Macaroni Salad came years ago, while shopping the salad bar as one of those by-the-pound deli places that dot big Northeast cities. You grab a lidded container and load it up with various pre-made salads, gummy sushi rolls and wilted greens, then pay huge sums for your sub-par box of mayonnaise-y goodness. The tuna mac was always appealing upon initial examination, but frequently disappointing when tasted. I think that many others of you have similar stories of disappointment in relationship to this dish - whether you're familiar with the kind out of the salad bar or from childhood potlucks and church suppers.

However, last night, I set out to redeem the noble tuna mac and was far from disappointed. I first started thinking about tuna salad over the weekend, when my mother mentioned that she was making it for dinner on Saturday night. Growing up, she always served tuna salad with a side of mashed potatoes - there was something about the combination of creamy and crunchy that she really liked. These days, she cubes a boiled potato and tosses it into the tuna salad instead, getting that creamy/crunchy action without the effort of a second dish. That got me thinking about adding a starchy element to tuna salad and the pint jar of whole wheat elbows on the kitchen shelf caught my eye and winked.

I was planning on making it on Sunday night, but at the last minute, we got an invitation to go and have pulled pork sandwiches with friends. I have a personal policy to never turn down the offer of homemade pulled pork, so the tuna mac plan was postponed.

Last night, my time for dinner prep was limited, as I was trying to make a 7 pm movie. I was contemplating just getting a sandwich on my way there, but when I walked in the door, my boyfriend was hungry and I realized that 1). we had a fridge full of food that needed to be used and 2). I had $2.15 in my wallet. So I cooked tuna mac.

I quickly filled a medium sized pot with water and put it on to boil. While that worked itself out, I pulled the two cans of tuna out of the fridge that I had put in to chill on Sunday afternoon (I don't know why I thought I needed to chill the tuna, since I was going to add warm pasta to it, but that's what my mom does when she's planning on making tuna salad, so it is what I do as well). They got opened, drained and put into a bowl. I chopped three celery ribs, two fresh green onions from top to bottom and half a slightly wrinkled green pepper into similarly sized small bits and mounded it on top of the tuna.

At this point, the water was boiling, so I added a pinch of salt (I love how the water foams when you add salt) and the jar of elbows.

While the pasta cooked, I seasoned. Salt, pepper, a handful of finely chopped basil and two shakes of garlic powder (occasionally, it's handy stuff). The pasta was done at this point (you want to be careful when you cook whole wheat pasta, as it can turn to mush in a remarkably short amount of time). I drained it and added the cooked noodles to the bowl, along with a good spoonful of mayonnaise (use less than you think you need, the heat of the elbows will allow it to spread more easily than it does when you're only using cold ingredients).

And that was it. Dinner in the time it takes to cook pasta. I packed mine up on top of a layer of halved grape tomatoes and took it to the movies with me. Scott ate his along side a sliced cucumber. There was still enough for me to eat it again for lunch today (that's the picture you see above).

Tuna mac has been redeemed!