Cranberry Tuna Salad (Whole 30)

Is it too early to start with the  cranberry recipes?  The answer to that is hell no, it’s never too early for  cranberry  recipes.  Every year when fall hits and pumpkin spice is everywhere and in everything,  I try to find recipes that use the very under rated cranberry. 

This years cranberry festivities  are starting with a simple recipe for tuna salad.  The original says it tastes just like the cranberry tuna salad you get at Whole Foods.  I can’t speak to that because I have never had it.  I can speak to this is a very tasty tuna recipe that doesn”t have that strong fishy taste tuna salad recipes sometimes have.

Rather than serving this as a sandwich, I like to serve it on a bed of salad greens or stuffed in mini bell peppers.

• Difficulty: Easy
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From Coco and Ash

2 (5 oz) cans tuna, drained

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup chopped scallions

1 TBS lemon juice

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/4 tsp salt

In small bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix well. 

Balsamic Steak Marinade (Whole 30)

I had great plans this morning to get up and get a bunch of pictures added to posts and scheduled for publication next week while I am on vacation next week so you all wouldn’t even miss me while I am gone. You know how much I got done? Nothing. You know why I got nothing done? Because WordPress changed their editor and now I don’t know how to do anything. Why is this annoying me so much when I learned it once and know I will eventually learn it again? I don’t know but it is. Thank you for letting me get that off my chest. Please enjoy the recipe while I go learn how to blog again.

Balsamic Herb Steak Marinade

• Difficulty: Easy
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From The Real Food RDs

1/4 cup balsamic vinagar

3 TBS olive oil

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp onion powder

1 TBS Italian seasoning

1 TBS Dijon or spicy brown mustard

1/8 tsp black pepper

In a non -reactive bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix well. Add the steak of choice and marinate for 30 minutes to 24 hours. Cook the steak with your prefered method to your prefered doneness.

Chic-fil-a Sauce (Whole 30)

Today I thought I would share something with you that is making me very happy, in hope, that it would make you very happy too. Meet the newest member of my flock, Ella Rose. She is a cockatiel who joined our flock 10 days ago.

Like Pepper, the parakeet who joined the flock a few weeks ago, Ella is very young. Unlike Pepper, Ella is not afraid of me. Except for the very brief, where the hell I am I fear she showed the day I brought her home, she hasn’t been afraid of anywhere I have taken her or anything I have asked her to do.

My male cockatiel, Beau, has become Ella’s fierce protector. I don’t know if this is because Ella is young or if it is because Beau thinks Ella is his mate. All I know is it is hilarious to watch Beau flip his lid when he doesn’t like something I am doing with or to Ella, like scratching her neck feathers. Beau tries to chase Ella away from me, when that doesn’t work because Ella likes getting her neck feather scratched. Then Beau tries to chase me away so I just stop which doesn’t work because Beau is not the boss of me, he stomps off in a huff and does the bird equivalent of pout.  It’s just so dang funny,

On to today’s recipe,  Chic-fil-a is probably my favorite fast food place.  Before Covid, I used to stop there after work on the last day of my work week and treat myself to a grilled chicken club and large waffle fries before doing my grocery shopping for the week.   Since I can’t do that anymore and don’t know when I will be able to again,  I have been looking for suitable replacements I can make at home.  While the stuff I make at home won’t be exactly the same as what I get at the restaurant, it is dang close, and still very delicious.  Today I have a the sauce recipe for you.  My next recipe will give you a Chic-fil-a grilled chicken recipe to use it on.  Although, sauce is very good on many things.  I have used it as a spread for chicken burgers, a salad dressing and mixed it into my tuna salad instead of plain mayo.  I am sure you will be able to come up with ideas as well.  Enjoy.

Chic-fil-a Sauce

• Difficulty: Easy
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Adapted From Grass Fed Salsa

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 TBS yellow mustard

2 TBS BBQ Sauce

1 1/2 tsp rice wine vinegar

1 1/2 tsp coconut aminos

1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Mix well Use a sandwich or spread or as the dressing for a salad.

Air Fry Apple Pies

There are just some ingredients that don’t lend themselves to small batch cooking. They don’t come in small packages or they don’t freeze well so you can’t really plan to use them later or, if you are like me, you know if you toss the remainder in the freezer you will forget about them and end up throwing them out in 6 months anyway.

Egg roll wrappers are one of those ingredients. I used 8 of them in the air fryer traditional egg roll post so I had 6 or 7 wrappers left. What the heck I am I going to do those leftover wrappers?

I am currently in deep, mad, love with Pizza Hut’s apple pie dessert. Don’t ask me why. I just am. So I wondered if I could make something similar using my air fryer, egg roll wrappers and a homemade apple pie filling. The good news is I totally can so now I stop ordering pizza just so I can get apple pie for dessert. Lol.

The best thing about these pies is you don’t have to cook the filling first.

Apple Pies

• Difficulty: Easy
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Inspired by Dessert For Two

1 medium Honey Crisp apple, peeled and chopped

1/8 tsp allspice

1/4 tsp cinnamon

2 TBS sugar

5-6 egg roll wrappers

In a small bowl, combine the apple, allspice, cinnamon and sugar. Mix until the apples are well coated.  Add 3 tablespoons of the apple mixture to the middle third of the egg roll wrapper. Fold each side of the wrapper toward the middle of the filling.Bring the bottom third of the egg roll wrapper over the top of the filling and roll up.Use a bit of water applied to the wrapper with your finger to seal the egg roll. Preheat your air fryer to 400 degrees for 2-3 minutes while you finish filling the egg rolls. Once all the egg rolls are rolled, lightly spray them with oil or cooking spray and place in the air fryer basket. Bake for 10 minutes flipping half way through the cooking time.

Air Fryer Egg Rolls — To Spray or Not To Spray

To spray or not to spray. That is the question. And it is a good question. when I posted the air fryer corn on the cob recipe a few weeks ago, my follower, Old Mainer, posted a comment asking if I sprayed the corn with oil before I cooked it because every recipe he sees for the air fryer, says to spray the food with oil. The question got me to thinking about whether or not it is necessary to spray or add oil to everything cooked in the air fryer.To determine, to my mind at least, whether or not everything made in the air fryer needs oil, I went back through all the air fryer recipes I have made in the past 6 months and remade some of them. I have come to the conclusion that sometimes you need to spray oil on your food before cooking and sometimes you don’t. I know that isn’t very helpful so let me explain a little further.Whether or not you want to use in the air fryer depends on a few things.

1. What do you want your final result to be? If you want your final result to be crispy, a light spray of oil will help with that and also help promote browning. If a crispy result isn’t what you are looking for then skip the oil.
2. Will what your cooking stick to the grate? If so, give it a spray of oil before cooking. This mainly applies to lean cut of meat and seafood. Meats that render a lot of fat like bacon and ground beef don’t need a spray of oil.
3. Any vegetable you want roasted should receive a quick toss in a teaspoon or two of oil before being put in the air fryer.

Egg Rolls

• Difficulty: Medium
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Adapted From My Forking Life

Note: You can leave the shrimp out, if you don’t have any. It is still an awesome recipe without them.

1 1/2 tsp olive oil

3 oz raw shimp, finely chopped, optional

1/4 lb ground pork

5 oz coleslaw mix, approximately 2 cups

3/4 tsp soy sauce

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp sesame oil

8 egg roll wrappers

Heat a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil. When hot, add the shrimp and ground pork. Cook the mixture, breaking it up with a fork, until the pork is browned and the shrimp cooked through, 5-7 minutes. In a medium bowl, add the coleslaw mix, green onions, soy sauce, garlic powder, salt, black pepper, sesame oil and ground pork. Add 3 tablespoons of the meat mixture to the middle third of the egg roll wrapper. Fold each side of the wrapper toward the middle of the filling.Bring the bottom third of the egg roll wrapper over the top of the filling and roll up.Use a bit of water applied to the wrapper with your finger to seal the egg roll.Preheat your air fryer to 400 degrees for 2-3 minutes while you finish filling the egg rolls. Once all the egg rolls are rolled, lightly spray them with oil or cooking spray and place in the air fryer basket. Bake for 10 minutes flipping half way through the cooking time.