It seems that we never really make things as good as our moms. For years I've tried my best to perfect my chicken salad recipe. I've added different spices and added nuts, but never quite perfected my chicken salad until yesterday. Being last minute on almost everything I do in and out of the kitchen, yesterday was no exception.
In the South, we love our wedding showers. It is traditional to have certain appetizers to help celebrate the bride to be with. Yesterday we got to honor one of my oldest friends sweet daughter Leslie Hodges on her upcoming wedding with a bridal shower. She will be a beautiful bride here very soon and her aunt Camila, her family, along with her mom's and dad's friends came together to shower her with gifts for her home with her new husband.
I will always remember Leslie and her sweet sisters in their pajamas at our house after Friday night football games. All our young friends would gather at our little house in town after home football games to visit and the kids would play and then pass out all over our girls bedrooms. We've been friends with her parents for a lifetime and love them and their families very much. Scott made them a part of our lives many years ago on our very first date and their 'Indian Rock' community connection from church, to classmates, to dear friends goes back a long way. To sum it all up, it's very special to celebrate sweet friends kids whenever you can.
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| Leslie and her sweet mom Cindy |
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| Leslie and her sisters Lauren, Lacy and mom Cindy |
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| Hostesses for Leslie's wedding shower full of aunts and friends |
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| Leslie with her mom and dear grandmothers |
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| Leslie with friend Anna Jo and daughter Kayla |
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| Leslie and Patti, her sweet stepmother |
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| Cindy and sister Camila |
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Leslie and best friend Cassie
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It is tradition to serve dainty foods and not a full meal at a southern wedding shower. In our little town a favorite party food is always petite fours that are little white cakes with a delicate white icing on top. You simply can never get enough of these and everyone loves them. Along with those little cakes, you will always find these days beautifully decorated sugar cookies in beautiful bridal designs, fruits and cheese trays, seasoned and spiced nuts, sausage balls and little pinwheel sandwiches that in our part of the south are made with tortillas. My job was to make chicken salad to serve with crackers for Leslie's shower and instead of store bought, I chose to make it from scratch last minute.
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| Stunning cookies |
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| Loved these sweet and modern napkins |
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| A pretty southern wedding shower table full of finger foods |
Literally as I drove to the store, I called my mom and asked her to snap a picture of her handwritten recipe and send it to me. You'll see her recipe note below.
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| My mom's beautiful handwriting. You can tell it's a teacher's penmanship! |
I know one day I hope very far in the future, that these recipe notes will all be handed down to me. On this day, I was thankful for the technology of telephone photography and the ease in which I was able to get a copy of the recipe instead of having it recited to me last minute.
Using store bought rotisserie chicken, I deboned the meat and cut it all into small bite sized portions. Fresh celery, green grapes, long, green onions (green tops as well), and fresh squeezed lemon were added to make
My Momma's Chicken Salad the best I've honestly ever had. The things that I believe took this chicken salad over the top were the pineapple and sour cream along with the Real Mayonnaise that we mixed in with plenty of salt and black pepper. If you are not a fan of black pepper, you can hold off on it, but I love, love it in abundance and especially with this chicken salad.
My youngest daughter Audrey was a huge help slicing the grapes with my newest, favorite cherry tomato slicer and helped me mix it all together while making sure I was following my mom's recipe exactly as it was written.
Audrey and I doubled the recipe using two rotisserie chickens so that we could have some for lunch the next day and for the week ahead.
My Momma's Chicken Salad was seriously a huge hit at the shower and from the 8 cups I took, literally only 1 cup was left. I promised to place the recipe on my blog and recipe site today, so that we could share with all those who asked for it.
As always a special thanks to my sweet mom who inspires me more than she knows with her cooking, her tried and true recipes and love for us all. She is one of my biggest cheerleaders ever and along with so many of her and my Granny's recipes, her chicken salad will forever be on my shower menus from now on.
So whether it's a wedding shower, birthday party, or you just want a wonderful chicken salad to serve with crackers or between to pieces of bread as a sandwich, try
My Momma's Chicken Salad recipe. In a pinch, store bought can be a great substitute, however from start to finish Audrey and I had
My Momma's Chicken Salad Recipe recipe done in under 30 minutes and in a pretty crystal bowl ready to go. Sometimes last minute recipes are the best recipes!
Enjoy and let me know if you like it please.
Alise
The Ranch Kitchen
