White Bean and Tuna Salad

I walked outside this week. First time since they brought me here. Rivera cleared me for supervised outdoor movement, which means I can shuffle around the courtyard on crutches while someone watches to make sure I don't fall over. The someone was a nurse named Corporal Webb who sat on a bench with her phone and let me do my shuffling in peace, which I appreciated. Some people here want to talk about it. The walk. The progress. The journey. Webb just sat there. Good people know when to sit there.

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The air was warm. D.C. spring, which is nothing like Montana spring — too humid, too green, too many people — but it was outside and it was air and there was sky above me instead of 847 ceiling tile holes and I stood in that courtyard on one good leg and one bad leg and I breathed. Just breathed. For maybe ten minutes I wasn't thinking about the road or the sound or Derek. I was thinking about the way air feels when you haven't been outside in six weeks. It feels like being a person again. Almost.

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Tomlinson shipped out Thursday — home to Alabama. His mother is driving up to get him. He shook my hand with his remaining hand and said, "Gallagher, you're the quietest son of a bitch I've ever met and I'm going to miss you." I said, "Send cornbread." He laughed. I don't know if he'll send cornbread. I hope he does. That cornbread was good and the person who gave it to me was good and the world is not entirely composed of roads that blow up. I'm trying to remember this.

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I've been thinking about cooking. Not doing it — I can barely stand long enough to eat, let alone cook — but thinking about it. The cast iron skillet hanging in Mom's kitchen. Dad's charcoal grill on the porch. Elk chili in the Dutch oven on a November night. I keep building meals in my head the way some guys here build model planes or watch TV. I construct a steak dinner from memory: the charcoal, the salt, the six minutes per side, the rest. I think about the sear. I think about the smoke. I think about standing at the grill in January in a Carhartt jacket with my breath visible and the stars out and the cold not bothering me because the fire is right there.

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I'm going to cook again. I don't know when or where. But I'm going to stand at a fire and cook a steak and the sky will be there and the smoke will be there and I will be there. That's not a plan. It's just the next thing I can picture that isn't the road. Start with what you can picture. I can picture fire.

But the steak wasn’t the first thing I cooked. Not even close. When I finally got home and stood in a kitchen again—my own kitchen, not a memory of someone else’s—I couldn’t stand long enough to fire up a grill. I opened the pantry and pulled out two cans of tuna and two cans of beans. I squeezed a lemon. I chopped an onion. It took ten minutes and I sat down to eat it and it was the best meal I’d had in months, not because it was fancy but because I’d made it myself, standing up, in a kitchen that was mine. Here’s the recipe.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: None | Total Time: 10 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1/2 cup chopped red onions
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 cans (5 or 6-ounces each) tuna (I prefer albacore tuna packed in water)
2 cans (15-ounces each) Great Northern beans (rinsed and drained)
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
A few splashes of Tabasco sauce or other hot sauce
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Salt and olive oil to taste

Instructions

Prep the onions. In a small bowl, sprinkle some of the lemon juice over the chopped onions while you prepare the other ingredients. This will take some of the oniony edge off the onions.
Combine and season. Drain the tuna and put it into a large bowl. Add the beans to the tuna and gently stir to combine. Add the onions, parsley, black pepper, lemon zest and lemon juice and mix to combine. Add Tabasco or hot sauce to taste. If the salad needs more acid, add a little more lemon juice. If the salad seems a little dry, add a little bit of olive oil. Add salt to taste.
Serve. Serve chilled or at room temperature. The salad develops great flavor if tightly covered and refrigerated for a couple hours, or up to a day, before serving. Serve with crackers, lightly toasted bread, lettuce cups/leaves, fresh vegetables, etc.

Nutrition (per serving)

White Bean and Tuna Salad — When the Fire You Picture Is Just a Kitchen Light