Lean, Mean Tuna Salad Sammie

September 14, 2008 at 11:41 pm (Eat Healthy!, Entree, Recipes, Seafood)

Attendance on this blog is dropping off precipitously.  Is it I? Do you not love me anymore?  Is it the fact that I have been posting new blog entries slower than a snail can cross the road?  Is it the fact that nobody is eating anything good around here and people are getting crabby?!  Can it be that someone posts a lovely peach cobbler weeks ago and then tells you that you can eat five pounds of fresh peaches for one puny slice?????

 

Anyway.  The weight loss program is working and it is working well so any of you that are still hanging in here with me, thank you.  Hopefully I will be sleek and sexy again in no time and then the lessons I have learned on this program will be ingrained and I will stay healthy for life. 

 

One thing that you tend to do on Weight Watchers is try to lighten up your foods a bit because eating a giant hunk of real cheese could mean the difference between eating a satisfying amount of healthy food for the day and well… eating a huge hunk of real cheese.  So, you tend to make choices like:   I can go to a chain restaurant and eat a quesadilla or I can eat three meals and two snacks today.  One thing that I haven’t been eating is tuna salad and I certainly don’t eat tuna melts for now.  I love real mayo and I tried so hard to like reduced fat mayo in my tuna salad but it didn’t work out for me.  I just didn’t like it at all. For me, it is the real thing in all of its fatty glory and full serving size or none at all.  So I was pretty intrigued when I was browsing the Eating Well magazine site and came across a recipe for a hot tuna salad sandwich that had all sorts of goodies in it but very little fat.  I made these sandwiches today and they were surprisingly good.  Now, I do have to warn you that they are suffering from good marketing.  When I think of a panini, I think of gobs of melted cheese on artisinal bread.  This sandwich is a hot sandwich but it is not melty or moist.  But what it lacks in fatty goodness, it makes up for in clean flavor.  I lightened up the sandwich even more by toasting it up in my George Foreman Lean, Mean, Fat reducing grilling machine.  (O.K. go ahead and laugh but it is a great invention!).  Here is my version of the sandwich:

 

Mediterraean Tuna Panini

Adapted from Eating Well Magazine (use this link to find out what to do if you don’t have a George Foreman grill or a panini press)

Makes 4 Panini

 

2 six ounce cans of chunk light tuna, drained

1 plum tomato, chopped

¼ cup crumbled feta cheese (preferably Mediterranean herb flavor)

2 tbsp chopped marinated artichoke hearts

3 tbsp minced red onion

1 tbsp chopped, pitted kalamata olives

1 tsp capers, rinsed and chopped

Juice of up to half a lemon

Black pepper to taste

8 slices whole wheat bread

Olive oil spray

 

Place tuna in a large bowl and flake with a fork.  Combine well with tomato, feta, artichoke hearts, red onion, kalamata olives, capers, lemon juice and pepper.  Divide Tuna mixture between four slices of bread.  Top with remaining four slices of bread.  Preheat your George Foreman grill to 400 degrees F. for five minutes.  Spray the inside of the grill with olive oil cooking spray. Arrange sandwiches in the grill and close the lid.  Grill for three minutes.  Remove the sandwiches and serve them immediately.

 

 

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