Jalapeno tuna salad & lunch prep

The salad prep assembly line

Every Sunday I spend extra time in the kitchen. I like to pick a dinner that will take too long to do during the week and cook that while I do prep work for the week with lunches and possibly breakfasts, too. I always eat the same thing for lunch, a spinach or kale salad loaded with veggies and a can of sardines on the side. I used to always eat some type of fruit, too (usually an apple) but fruits are very limited on the 21 Day Sugar Detox. You can have 1 fruit a day and the choices are a granny smith apple, green tipped banana, or grapefruit. My grocery has not had organic granny smith's so I haven't been able to get those, and the bananas ripen so quickly that I only end up getting one or two before they are too ripe. The grapefruits have just been so huge. So I just haven't been doing fruit like I used to.

I use glass containers to store the toppings all week in the fridge

What's in my salads: Carrots, cucumbers or sweet peppers, radishes or celery, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, 5 kalamata olives, 8 cherry tomatoes (or are they called grape? They are the small ones) some shredded unsweetened coconut, and when I'm not on 21DSD, raisins. Then I do a can of sardines on the side. I never in a million years thought I would like sardines, but I had never actually tried them, I just let the fact that it was a whole fish scare me. Well, guess what? Its NOT the whole fish (there is no head and eyes, which I think would have bothered me) and they are DELISH! Now I eat them daily and they are so very healthy for you, too.

This mayo with the extra spices and dill, YUM

I used to always buy Phillip a pre-made chicken salad to have for lunch, but I noticed the 21DSD guidebook and cookbook had a few different types of salads that he would like. Last week I tried making him the salmon salad which he liked but said got kind of soggy, so this week I decided to make him the jalapeño tuna salad out of the 21 Day Sugar Detox cookbook by Diane Sanfilippo.

What I made: Jalapeño tuna salad

Tuna salad all mixed and ready for the week

What I did differently/how I changed the recipe: Diane has a mayo recipe in her book, but there is an easy mayo recipe out of Julie Bauer's most recent cookbook that I love to make, so I used that one instead of the recipe out of the 21DSD cookbook (it calls for just part of the egg where Julie's uses the whole thing, I just find it easier). Also she recommends removing the seeds and white membrane from the jalapeños, but as I mentioned on the last recipe we enjoy spicy, so I just kept all of the jalapeño to use in the salad.

What I learned:  I didn't really learn anything new from this one except that they show in the picture it being served out of an avocado which is genius! Avocado is amazing at any time, so using that instead of a bun is such a great idea!

Jalapeno tuna salad rating: 4.5 stars

I even took a serving of this to have on my salad instead of the sardines this week and it was very yummy

My salads all packed (I put the spinach in its own bag to bring separately) with Phillip's tuna salad  all stacked in the fridge and ready for the week.