Recipe Two-Fer

Well, folks, I have a two-fer for you today. TWO recipes are included here for you to download, follow, and enjoy!

I grew up eating--begrudgingly, mind you--a fair amount of egg salad and chicken salad sandwiches. I didn't particularly care for either, but it was better than eating broccoli, in basically any form, so there's that!

As an adult, I've come to really like egg salad and chicken salad--especially if there is no celery in it. I even like pimento cheese sandwiches now! How times change!!

There are certain seasons where I am drowning in eggs. Naturally, I look for recipes that use a large amount of eggs all at once--egg casseroles, omelets, quiches, whatever.

Last year, I was on the hunt for the perfect egg salad recipe--perhaps a dill pickle-inspired one. One of my favorite snacks is boiled eggs and dill pickles. No, I'm not pregnant. Now, I understand most of you grown-up types like the crunch of the celery in your egg or chicken salad--and veggies on your pizza. I do not. So I specifically only looked at recipes that did not include celery, because those are all basically the same: egg, mayo, salt, pepper, mustard, celery. Blah. Bland. BORING! I need a bit more zing!

I looked at probably 10 different recipes, got a general idea of what I thought might be good, then got to work on making my own egg salad. I got the taste down to just about perfect, but the texture was too "wet." So I cut back on the mayo and the dill pickle relish, which was just about perfect. Tried different kinds of mustard, including dry mustard. The egg salad I came up with was basically perfect. I was super happy with it, and couldn't wait to eat a sandwich later! I stuck it in the fridge for a few hours, to let the flavors meld together more, when I saw a baggie of some leftover shredded chicken from the night before. I tossed that into my egg salad recipe, too, tasted it, was pretty pleased, and stuck the whole thing back in the fridge. A few hours later, I tried it on a cracker, and y'all, it was awesome!

The next day, I had a lock-in to attend with my American Heritage Girls troop. Naturally, I packed up my chicken-and-egg salad to eat as a snack later in the evening. When I sat down to eat it that evening, after probably 24 hours of flavor-melding, it was OH MY GOSH delicious! I ate the entire batch of chicken and egg salad by myself over the course of 2 days. It was that good.

So your recipe two-fer includes both the chicken-and-egg recipe, AND, since all good egg salad and chicken salad recipes call for mayo, I have also included a very simple, quick, and basic homemade mayo recipe.

You'll notice, in all of my recipes, that I don't include nutritional information. I could take the time to look up all of the ingredients, and make a best guess. And at some point, maybe I will. But there are a few things I've learned over the last several years of deep-diving into food and nutritional information (I'm still learning)!!

1. Our USDA-approved food pyramid is totally upside down.

2. Sugar--and it's artificial counterparts (NOT FAT!)--is what makes us fat and unhealthy.

3. Calories and macronutrients, while absolutely worth paying attention to, cannot be your only dietary measuring sticks.

BUT, all of that is a blog post for another day! In the meantime, eat clean, eat whole, eat local. Avoid GMOs. Food is fuel, and your body is a machine--treat it as such. And enjoy the chicken-and-egg salad!!