Chicken Salad

I bought my last package of brown paper lunch bags. 50 count.

It will get us through the end of my boy Nick’s senior year…through the end of our tenure with the school district that has served our kids so well. Yes, I cried in the aisle. Yes, I had ‘a moment’. Yes, brown paper bags put my life in perspective real fast. I better move on or this is gonna get ugly…

Extra Large. Extra Strong. Self-Standing.

This is the description of the bags on the packaging. In 18 years this is the first time that I really paid attention to what the packaging said. Come on! (Yes, I’m yelling!) Who would have thought that the inspiration I needed on some days was staring me right in the face? All those little love notes on napkins…some days I rushed to get something down…anything…who knew that words of encouragement were sitting right there on my counter? What else have I missed? Poetry on the Pop-Tarts… Soliloquies on the cereal…

Inspiration is everywhere! We just need to look for it!

Nick’s favorite lunchtime meal is a chicken salad sandwich. He’ll eat it all dressed up with fancy ingredients like almonds and dried cranberries, but his supreme, number one, bar- none, chicken salad sandwich of choice includes just three ingredients – chicken, mayonnaise and onions (lots of them)! And if we throw in a little crunchy lettuce – he’ll be happy!

Let’s go a little fancy…

Chicken Salad
Ingredients
4 cups cubed cooked chicken breast
1 cup good mayonnaise
½ cup pine nuts, toasted
½ cup minced shallots
Salt and black pepper to taste
8 leaves green leaf lettuce
Thick sliced Tuscan bread

Directions
Combine chicken, mayonnaise, pine nuts, shallots and season with salt and pepper. Serve the chicken salad on Tuscan white bread with a couple leaves of lettuce and a little side of Fritos…that never hurts anything!

Hey! He liked it!