Playing Catch Up - Chicken Salad

This week has just flown by. I had some catching up to do since I was gone last weekend. Also I had several volunteer board meetings at night this week. And I 'needed' to play tennis a couple of times this week - once for a team and once just for fun.

I actually do have a part-time job. Very part-time. I used to say that my hours were from 10 till 2 and I take a 2 hour lunch. But I just had to cut back on those hours to make time for everything else.

I do bookkeeping for my Dad's building materials business, The Round Up Store. The Round Up has a very colorful and interesting history and is still very interesting. The Round Up deserves it's own blogpost - maybe several.

For me to be doing bookkeeping is pretty interesting in itself, but that, in fact, is what I do. After working in the computer industry, and then doing some computer teaching at several community colleges, I realized that what I really wanted was to be a Mom. And I have never regretted that decision.

However, I enjoy the challenge and the experiences in the working world so the perfect fit for me was to do something that I could keep flexible hours. The Round Up needed someone to keep up with the bills, taxes, and other paperwork, so there I was. It has been so much more rewarding than I would have ever dreamed. I have done this for 20 years and I have always enjoyed alot of flexibility with my time. Now that I have a laptop, Quickbooks software, email, etc, I have even more flexibility and I am very grateful.

So this week, I played catch up at work, played catch up with housework, played catch up with my volunteer committments and I played tennis. The trick was trying to have something decent for supper that didn't require alot of time.

With both boys away at college, David and I do not eat huge meals at supper. So, tonight we had Chicken Salad, Saltine Crackers and Fresh Watermelon. We love chicken salad alot of different ways. David's mother makes a great chicken salad that she seasons with dill. Carol makes a great Fruited Chicken Salad that I will post one day. But tonight, with all the playing catch up and then needing to catch up in the garden too, I made the easy version of Mama's Chicken Salad. Actually Mama usually uses Turkey - so it's Turkey Salad. She cooks a Turkey breast really often. It is like so many of Mama's dishes. I don't have real exact amounts. But one of the most important things is to cut everything up uniformly. Another thing is when you are cutting up the chicken, you should not include any gristle or fat or other icky things. Mama's rule is "Don't put anything in that you wouldn't want to eat yourself". So here is how I made Mama's Chicken Salad tonight:

Mama's Chicken Salad

Cube chicken, taking out anything that you wouldn't want to eat yourself
(tonight I used a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store to speed things up)
Make sure you cube it up uniformly - We like it fairly chunky, but not so chunky that it will fall off of a saltine cracker!
Several stalks of Celery - diced. We like alot of celery.
Sweet Salad Cube Pickles. We like alot of pickles too.
Mayo, Salt and Pepper to taste. Remember "You can add more, but you can't add less"

Sometimes Mama adds thyme to her turkey salad and probably some other spices now and then. But, it can hit the spot just to make the quick and easy way.