Update on EsMay plus My Crunchy Chicken Salad

I received the following message from EsMay approximately 30 minutes ago.

The storm has been going on since about noon, and it’s after supper now.  The winds are quite strong right now, and really buffeting the building.  We have been having complete white outs for hours, but still have power.  They downgraded the expected wind from 150km an hour to over 100km an hour, but didn’t say how much over.  I don’t see us keeping the power much longer as the winds intensify, but who knows. we're going to check on a few things, the winds are actually getting more,severe than we expected, so prayers would be welcome too. 

A plow just went by, we could see him coming up to drive by the front window, then all the sudden he disappeared in a whirl wind of snow right in front of our eyes, and came through once the whirl wind passed him.  It literally looked like he was eaten up for a minute.  Anyway, the windows are really rattling, so prayers are so welcome.  Got to go see if we need to take care of anything. :(

Now on to regularly scheduled programming...LOL
I was talking on the phone with a friend of mine while I was making my chicken salad yesterday which she loves.  Since she now lives on the other end of the state, we can’t meet for and share lunch as we did when we were in the same city.  She asked if I would write out the instructions and send them to her…which I did.  Thought some of you in blogland would enjoy it also.
 
Ingredients:

• 3 cups cooked chicken
• 4 stalks celery, diced
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 medium apple, diced
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• ¼ teaspoon pepper
• ½ cup sweet pickle relish
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
• ¾ cup mayonnaise
• Salt and pepper to taste
• ½ cup walnuts, chopped
• Crispy bacon, 2 pieces for each serving

Directions:

1. Skin and debone chicken and shred or dice into large bowl.
2. Mix in celery, onion and apples.
3. Mix in garlic powder, pepper, pickle relish and mustard.
4. Mix in mayonnaise…start with ½ cup and then use enough to bind well.
5. Mix in walnuts.
6. Chill immediately.

Notes:

• I usually serve this one of three ways:

- On bread for a sandwich…with two pieces of bacon…don’t need anything additional
- In a cored-out tomato…crumble one or two pieces of bacon over the top
- On a bed of lettuce… crumble one or two pieces of bacon over the top

• I used a roasted chicken I had bought at the grocery store but you can use roasted, boiled, baked, whatever you have.
• I have not ‘measured’ any of the ingredients…these are guesses so I would suggest you err on the side less as you can always add more.
• The sweet relish I used is my homemade relish which is not as sweet as store-bought so you might want to consider using less relish or possibly using bread and butter pickles. Not sure that dill pickle relish will work well with the apples and walnuts.
• I used Gala apples as that is what I had in the house but you can use your favorite.
• You could definitely add chopped hard boiled eggs to this if you would like.
• Of course, you can add and/or omit any ingredients you choose! LOL

 
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. If you try the recipe, as always, I would love any feedback you would care to give. 
 
I know that in addition to EsMay and the Duke, we have other blog land family who are dealing with this latest storm so please send prayers, positive energy, good thoughts, etc. for all those impacted.