Chicken Salad is one of the things I do really well. I have a few “solid” recipes up my sleeve that I can cook anywhere, anytime, no recipe required. Lasagna is one, chicken salad is another. Chicken salad sandwiches… they’re light and refreshing in summer and comforting in winter.
When I was 16, it was time to get a summer job that didn’t involve babysitting small children. So I put out a bunch of resumes at the end of the school year at the little strip mall up the road from where we lived. It wasn’t exactly the best pickings. There was a K-Mart and a grocery store, a drug store, a bunch of low end clothing stores, and a small sandwich shop/cafe.
It was a pretty half-hearted effort on my part but.. frankly I would’ve been fine doing nothing all summer. The only thing motivating me was, if I got a summer job, I didn’t have to go on the family camping trip. Intstead I’d get to stay home BY MYSELF with the dog. Ahhh… a little taste of freedom!
Turns out the places I dropped resumes were about as enthusiastic about me as I was about them. The only one to call me back was the Sandwich Tree and so… I became a sandwich “expert” before Subway coined the term.
I hated it. Like, really hated it. Like the couple who came in every morning and told me every single time to only butter their toast “with just a light spread of butter… not too heavy, you know, but not too, too light. Just… a light spread“. I have no idea what they meant so every morning I buttered it exactly the same as I would butter mine at home. After a while I messed around and would put lots on one day and then nearly nothing the next day just to see if they ever said anything. But they didn’t. Ever. So I don’t even really know if they knew what “just a light spread of butter… not too heavy, but not too too light” meant.
I loved how the older ladies working there seemed to think that me making sandwiches was an excellent career opportunity and how one day, if I showed some skills, I might be allowed to work the cash register. And then, the sky would be the limit.
I also loved how I worked there for three months and the owners still had no idea what my name was (with their huge staff of eight).
But, I got paid a whopping $4/hour cash and my goal was to make $1000 by the end of the summer. (That’s 250 hours folks…).
Everyone should have to bus tables at some point in their life just to:
- realize what slobs the general public are
- appreciate their wait staff when they eat out
- seriously consider how perhaps going to university or college or trade school might be beneficial to their future
I learned all three.
I also learned how to make the best damn chicken salad I’d ever had. When virtually everything in the place was made from a commercial mix and the bread was bought from the grocery store (and not the fresh bakery), that’s saying something. But we made that chicken salad from scratch and it was goooooood.
The secret is the pickles and the curry powder. (that was my add on). You need the nice crunch from the pickles and celery and the curry gives it something unexpected.
About a month in to working there I got called by the drug store who offered me FIVE dollars an hour and they wanted me to be a cashier. Woah. My career was already skyrocketing! Watch out old ladies at the sandwich shop… I’m climbing up! I worked both jobs for a little while but when the sandwich place wouldn’t let me take my birthday off… I walked.
Here is the irony of this… I wound up working for that drug store chain for 21 years… in their stores and then in their head office. And it was when I was working in their IT department that we had an “efficiency” expert come in to analyze our processes. She was half of the couple that owned the sandwich shop. Hehe… she didn’t remember me and I had pretty much zero respect for her given how I was treated as a 16 year old peon. I did refresh her memory though – but she still didn’t remember. Lesson… treat everyone nicely. You never know when they will pop up again in your career. That 16 year old kid has to grow up sometime.
Onwards to the chicken salad. This is one of those recipes that is difficult to write down because I just know it by feel and taste. We did measure out the chicken but not the other ingredients so it did vary from day to day depending on who made it but it was always excellent. I like it on toasted with lettuce and tomato (avocado is good too!) and a little extra mayo spread on the bread.
I had mine with the super cute Lemmy soda I found in a little grocery store in a small town en route to Kelowna (I’m tempted to go back and buy their other flavours!)
- 2 cooked chicken breasts, diced into small cubes
- 1 large dill pickle finely diced
- 1 stalk of celery finely diced
- 2 tbsp of mayonnaise (feel free to add more if you like your salad even creamier - you can sub light mayo for less calories and not sacrifice taste)
- ¼ tsp curry powder
- salt and pepper to taste
- add all the ingredients into a single bowl and mix well.
- add more mayo if you need to for your taste
- you can serve immediately in a sandwich or on it's own but if you can let it sit in the fridge for an hour or so first the curry flavour will blend and give you a better depth of flavour
Funny how the couple were so quick to describe how exactly they wanted their buttered toast, but didn’t notice when you messed with it!
Curry powder in chicken salad is a great idea, and celery+dill pickle are excellent for crunch! My mom makes “ham salad” sandwiches by chopping up roast ham (like a real ham, not the deli stuff) with a few ingredients, but the key is the relish she adds, which is an odd ingredient for a ham salad sandwich, I think. It’s so good!
I can’t wait to see Jason’s counter-recipe!
Recipe sent.
GAME.ON.
it’s always that one key, weird ingredient that makes a dish, isn’t it? Not that curry powder is weird but it’s not obvious!
hehe… i’m not even bothered if Jason wins – it’s just fun watching him get all riled up. Although, I’m not above bribes 😉
Haha, that’s hilarious! I surprisingly have never had very picky customers when I worked from age 14-18 at food establishments. Also, 4$/hour? So not worth it.
Although I think this recipe for chicken salad is payment enough. This looks SO good!
$4 an hour was the minimum wage back then and because it was a sorta fast food cafe we didn’t get tips! the $5 an hour job was gold at the time!
Was laughing the whole way through, Melissa! 🙂 Isn’t that something…I also worked in food at one time. Had ketchup in my veins as I worked at McD’s in high school – was promoted to swing mgr and thought, at one time, that this was the career for me. I quickly found I did not have the personality or stomach for that type of work. Got to the point where I hated leaving work for the day knowing I’d have to return the next day. It got me through a “trade school” education (this is before going back to college). Those were the days!! 🙂
Hungry for this chicken salad – luv the close up of the chicken salad! Welcome Autumn and have a great week.
haha… yup. we all have those high school jobs. My high school boyfriend worked at McDonalds for a loooong time. I remember sitting in the parking lot eating french fries with him. lol.
Ah, the jobs of our youth. This was thoroughly entertaining! 2.0 loves a good chicken salad sandwich in his lunchbox, and I’m thinking I’ll make this for his birthday lunch this week. If you’ve gotta work on your birthday, you should have a special treat on your break!
I worked for a grocery store chain in high school, and we rang bells for the bag boys. I’m pretty sure that would be illegal now – people frown on that sort of thing. You’d push a little button by the cash, bells would chime throughout the store, and the bag boys (all boys I went to school with) would run from the back of the store to the front to pack groceries and sent them to parcel pick-up.
Maybe I should install a bell in my kitchen…
I want a bag boy bell in my kitchen!!!
Love this story! I think we all have a summer job story that convinced us education was a really good idea. And you’re right – treating people right is a good idea for so many reasons.
yeah you never know when and where people will reappear in life – it’s always a good idea to be kind.
ps. tried to leave you a comment on your beautiful Chili photos but couldn’t sign in with name/url option!
Wonderful photos of a fabulous sounding sandwich. Loved learning more about you in this post. You are funny, smart and very talented.