Chicken Salad

View from Torrey Pines State Park

“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”   - J.Steinbeck

Once it starts to warm up around here, my mom has a 'no oven ' rule. She hates to run the oven in the summer, especially since our house never has had air conditioner. This means we have to be creative with recipes that involve no cooking, stove cooking, microwave cooking or grill cooking.

My dad uses a charcoal grill. So when he decides to cook something, that means we need to take advantage of the coals and cook everything. So BBQ chicken night turns into cook more chicken for leftover night, cook hot dogs night, or cook every ounce of some form of steak in our freezer night.  We end up eating leftover grilled chicken for a week after that! It gets to the point where I'll eat any other kind of meat. Any meat! Just no more chicken!  "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know." LOL.

In the interest of making the boring, well, less boring, we have experimented with a couple of chicken salad recipes in the last few months. Both were different from the traditional chicken salad (which I love) and kind of fun to try. Sorry no photos.

I found the original recipes on allrecipes.com. I love that site!  Both my parents and I always 'enhance' recipes we find to put our own personal touch in. So the recipes I post are never the exact same as the original source.  However, I do recommend allrecipes.com as a great source for recipes!

RECIPE 1

8 Cup Chicken Salad (my mom calls it this because it calls for about 8 cups of stuff)

 

3 cups of chicken, cooked and chopped/cubed

1 c of chopped celery
¼ cup chopped green onions (about two)
1 c of chopped apples
1 c mix of red and green bell peppers chopped
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup chopped pecans
1 tsp paprika
1/3 c mayo (more if desired)
Ground pepper to taste
½ tsp seasoned salt if desired
       
In a medium bowl, mix together mayonnaise with paprika and seasoned salt if using. Blend in dried cranberries, celery, bell pepper, onion, and nuts. Add chopped chicken, and mix well. Season with black pepper to taste. Chill 1 hour.

Camp Pendleton, Oceanside

RECIPE 2
Fruity Curry Chicken Salad

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cooked and diced

1 stalk celery, diced

4 green onions, chopped

1 Golden Delicious apple -  diced

1/3 cup golden raisins

1/3 cup seedless green grapes, halved

1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon curry powder

3/4 cup light mayonnaise

 

In a medium bowl, mix together. Chill 1 hour.

 

If anyone has suggestions for non oven summer foods, please feel free to let me know!

Wilted Chard Salad

My dad grows a garden. Always has. It was nice as a kid because not only did we learn the meaning of prison labor, but we literally got to enjoy the fruits of our labor. I think I like vegetables now because I had a vested interest in them growing  up. Except lima beans. Hate them and always will.

Chard is sort of like spinach. I love it. I love all greens. I usually make a wilted spinach salad that involves feta cheese, but thought I would change it up a bit.

The stuff in the background is Orange Chicken, which I will provide that recipe at a later time.

For the chard, this is what I did.

Wilted Chard Salad

a bunch of chard, de-stemmed and sliced into manageable pieces (uncooked fills out a mixing bowl)
this stuff really cooks down a lot, so don't be fooled when you have a huge pile of it.
juice from 1/2 lemon
3-4 cloves of garlic minced
6 strips bacon (or can do bacon fat with no bacon)
salt and pepper to taste
green onions chopped

 

In a large skillet, fry to bacon. Pull out the bacon and leave the grease. toss in the minced garlic and mix around until golden brown. Break up the bacon pieces.

Put in the chard and cook down, about 5 minutes.
Mix in the bacon, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Toss in the green onions and mix around for another minute or so.

Makes about 3 servings.

Spoiler Alert: pretty much all future recipes will have vague amounts of ingredients. mostly because I toss in handfuls and pinches of stuff. I try hard to remember as I go, but I don't always remember what I did. I will use words like toss, slap, and pinch when referring to mixing in food.

Do, or do not. There is no 'try'.