Paleo Mayo - Sort of...

I had the time last night to go ahead and cook up my meals for the next few days. I don't have a chance to cook every night, so i cook in advance and then just pack leftovers for lunch. The boyfriend wanted shrimp, and i had that yummy bacon butter sitting in the fridge, calling to me, and the grocery store had asparagus on sale. So, i decided to toss the shrimp and the asparagus in a pan, along with a heaping spoonful of that bacon butter, and sautee it.

Delicious. Really. Even the boyfriend say "yeah, it's not bad". For a guy who's new to seafood, and still not real sure about it, that's high praise indeed.

Also on the agenda for the night was an attempt at paleo mayo. I had a craving for tuna salad. I was never a real big meat eater, so now that i'm eating meat at every meal, the same old beef and chicken is getting old. I wanted to shake things up a bit, and go with seafood for a while. Since i'm trying to stay paleo, a tuna salad sandwich was out of the question. But, I could make the tuna salad and then eat it on cucumber slices (instead of on crackers, which i had see in a cracker ad in the groucery coupon flyer). The only problem was that i didnt have any mayo.

I've never been a real big mayo fan. I was raised on Miracle Whip, not mayo. But, i eat ate my sandwiches dry, no condiments, so i never kept it in the house unless i knew i was making tuna salad (and even then, i'd use it once, and it would sit in the fridge until the expiration date). So, I decided to try my hand at making paleo mayo. I followed the instructions in Dr. Cordain's paleo cookbook (i forget the name right now). I did some extra reading online, and saw that you need to add the oil very slowly, because if you add it too fast , it wont emulsify.

I followed the instructions. I added the ingredients. I used the blender like it says in the book. I added the oil agonizingly slowly. I made a mess all over my countertop. In the end, all i had was a soupy mess that was bright yellow and definitely not mayonnaise, and a broken blender. Apparently, if you're in the habit of running the blender blades through the dishwasher, and then someone accidentally puts them away wet, and you have iron rich hard water like i do, the part of the blade that spins is eventually going to rust. When it rusts, and then you attempt to use the blender as much as i do, it rubs, the friction causes it to smoke, and eventually it builds up so much heat that things start melting.

So, no mayo, no tuna salad, and now it's time to go blender shopping. On a side note, i mentioned the mayo failure to a friend who's also trying to go paleo. She said she'd had the same soupy mess, and killed her blender in the process as well. Sounds like i'm going to be on the hunt for a commercially available paleo mayo. Any recommendations?