Long Island Chicken Salad



Memo graduated from William Floyd High School
on Long Island in 1992.

I lived on Long Island for 15 years...and that was 14 years ago! Boy, time flies! I guess I would say that Long Island is where my kids grew up. We lived in Mexico until Memo was 8 years old and Liz was 4. Then we lived in the Buffalo, New York area for two years. Jorge's company offered him a permanent position serving school districts on Long Island and as a family, we got tired of his commute weekly from Buffalo to Long Island! We moved into our first house a day or so before Thanksgiving 1984. We lived there for 4 years and then had a house built.  I think of Long Island as where my kids grew up because they did both Jr. and High School there!
Memo played football, wrestled and tennis. Liz was in the band and orchestra, dance team and tennis.

Anyway, I learned a lot of different recipes from friends, neighbors and local restaurants. This particular recipe came from a local bagel shop. I had never really had bagels much prior to living on Long Island even though we lived in Westchester, New York and Connecticut for many years, it was just not part of our culture. When I grew up food choices in families was mostly reserved for one's family ethnic background. And since we were not Jewish, I think it did not occur to my parents to introduce us to bagels! As I grew up and began to travel the world, I became acutely aware of different foods offered in different cultures. It was probably the beginning of my diversity in preparing foods. This bagel shop made all the traditional cream cheese mixtures like chive, scallion, raisin and nut, vegetable, lox, etc. They also offered bagel sandwiches at lunch. My absolute favorite was chicken salad!

Long Island Chicken Salad:
2 cups cooked chicken breast chopped into 1/2 inch pieces

Liz graduated from William Floyd High School
on Long Island in 1996.

2 stalks celery - medium chopped

1/2 cup seedless red grapes - halved

1 cup Hellman's or Best Mayonnaise

2 tbsp honey

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

I will go ahead and cook up some extra chicken breasts if I think I might be making this salad. I have also used the breast from a roasted chicken from the store. If not available, cook 4 chicken breasts in 2 cups of water with salt and 1/2 onion for 20 minutes. You can pull out the chicken breasts to cool and save the broth for another dish or soup. You can even freeze broth.

Once cooled, chop the chicken into 1/2 inch pieces and set aside add the chopped celery and grapes to the chicken. In a separate bowl, mix the mayonnaise, honey, salt and pepper gently fold into the chicken mixture covering completely all the chicken. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour. Serve with your favorite bread or bagel.