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.)
