Basic Chicken Salad with Additions and Serving Suggestions

The warm weather is here, so time to break out the salad recipes!  I don't know about you, but when it's warm out, I hate heating up my kitchen cooking.  Plus, the range of fresh fruits and vegetables just gets better and better during the coming months, so great salads are at the top of the list of preferred foods!

I was looking through my recipes for my favorite chicken salad and discovered that I have three!  So I thought I'd start with the basic ingredients they all share, and then move on to the additions.  And this is really only to get you started on your own endless additions, depending on your likes/dislikes/allergies.  Chicken salad is nothing if not totally versatile!  You'll notice there aren't any amounts (something my mother would love) -- that's because you can add and subtract to your heart's content and your tongue's delight (and use up all the leftovers in your fridge too :).

Basic Chicken Salad

Cooked, cut-up chicken or canned chicken chunks
Green onions, diced
Slivered or sliced almonds
Celery, diced or thinly sliced
Mayonnaise, enough to moisten and hold together
Lemon juice, dried basil, salt and pepper to taste

Additions
Grapes, sliced in half
Strawberries, chunked
Apple, diced
Cashews, chopped, instead of the almonds
Craisins
Green peppers (or red, orange, or yellow peppers), diced
Radishes, halved or quartered and thinly sliced

To Serve
For tea sandwiches, shred chicken to make a smoother spread.  Cut crusts off bread, spread on chicken salad, and cut into triangles or squares.
Serve on split croissants with lettuce and havarti cheese.
Serve a scoop on half an avocado.
Core a ripe tomato and cut into fourths, not cutting all the way through to the bottom, so it opens like a flower.  Fill center with chicken salad; garnish as you like.

Doesn't that look appetizing?  Chicken salad is definitely a summer staple!