Oops, I Did It Again

Chicken salad! A long-time favorite that I learned to make in my mother's kitchen--cutting up the boiled chicken with kitchen shears, chopping the apple and celery, grating in a tiny bit of onion (I now use half an onion and chop it,) and mixing it together with mayonnaise (I add a touch of curry powder now.)

It's one of my go-to hot weather meals--make it in the early morning, no heating up the kitchen.

So that's what I did yesterday, subbing in chicken from a store-bought rotisserie bird (not as good as when I boil/simmer the bird myself with lots of seasoning, including curry powder, But good enough.)

Oddly enough, like the hot weather shrimp salad I made last week, the chicken salad seemed to bring cooler weather. We were sitting on the porch before supper and had to go inside and put on long-sleeved shirts.

Mind you, I'm not complaining. Temperature in the seventies is near perfect. And, as John said, it felt like the beginning of fall. 

Looking out, the green on the mountain sides is beginning to tarnish a bit. And we're not running multiple fans in every room.

All this may change in a heartbeat. But we're enjoying it for now!

Update: 54 degrees this Monday morning!

 

Iconic Summer Supper

                                                                    

Chicken salad! Just like my mother and grandmother made, though I add curry powder and a good deal more onion to the chicken, apples, celery, and mayo (homemade--I'll not get into the Hellman's vs Duke's controversy that consumes various Southern-based FB groups.) One of my earliest kitchen chores was cutting up the cooked chicken--with scissors, still one of my go-to kitchen tools.

There are potato chips on the side because that's part of the tradition. Potato chips are a rare treat around here--I remember one of the boys spotting a bag as I was putting away groceries and asking if we were having company--company and chicken salad being two excuses to buy chips.

Traditionally there should be a Sunshine brand peach pickle on the plate--but I haven't seen them in the store for years and am serving some oven roasted asparagus with cheese.

Chicken salad has been a constant in my life.

John's last posting in the Marines was at the air base in Beaufort (Bew-furt), SC, and it was ungodly hot in our rented duplex. I made chicken salad, tuna salad, and shrimp salad in a weekly rotation, doing the cooking early in the morning and spending the rest of the day reading in a hammock under the big oak that was the only good thing about that rental. 

Some evenings we would go to the movie just to sit in the bliss of A/C. The movie changed weekly and some weeks we saw it twice.

Chicken salad--not just a meal but a repository of memories.

(Apologies for the crummy pictures--we were in a hurry to eat.)