Chicken Salad Days

We love to entertain, and last Friday, twelve of our preferred suppliers were invited to lunch at our office.  We did this for two reasons:

• We wanted to show appreciation to those suppliers who have supported us in the past year and show off our new office.
• These reps travel on business almost every week.  They get tired of eating in restaurants, so I made all of the food, except for the chocolate and pecan pies that LaDonna, one of our agents, made.

Our menu consisted of chicken salad on croissants, a Mediterranean orzo salad, beefsteak tomatoes with mozzarella and homemade balsamic vinagrette dressing, a melon boat, and of course, LaDonna's wonderful pies.

I had a lot of requests for the chicken salad recipe.  This is a recipe that I got from a friend of mine, Linda B, and that I modified a little.

So for those interested, here it is:

Chicken breasts with the bone in and skin on - as many as you want to cook
Hellman's Mayonaise
Durkee's Sauce
Pecans, chopped
Celery, chopped
Red seedless grapes (optional), halved
Lemon juice
Lemon Pepper

Stew the chicken breasts for at least two hours in a large pot.  Cut the tops off the celery and throw them into the pot.  Add two chicken bouillon cubes per chicken breast.  After the chicken has cooled thoroughly, pull off the bone, shred, and discard the bones and skin.

Chop up as much celery and pecans as you want to add to the salad.  Same with the grapes.  Mix some of the mayonaise with a small amount of Durkee's - I used 9 breasts in the batch I just made up and it took about 2 cups of mayonaise and less than a teaspoon of Durkee's.  Add some lemon juice and lemon pepper to this mixture and mix into the chicken, celery, pecans and grapes.  This will distribute the flavors evenly.  Add more mayonaise if needed.  It's better to start out with a smaller amount of mayonaise and add more after you initially mix this up. 

That's it.  Pretty easy and the best I've ever had.  Thanks, Linda B, for this wonderful concoction.