Oscar's Chicken Salad

This post features two vintage pics! Whoopee! Check out my growth as a photographer...



When I was at Hull House, I worked with a lot of cool people. It almost made it okay that the president's secretary was an out-of-hand, psychotic bitch who would forget that she asked you to do something, and then scream at you for doing it. Almost. Anyway, there was this guy named Oscar who made the greatest chicken salad for the potluck occasions.

I know it may not look that appealing, but it is really tasty. He would boil a chicken, pick it, then add mayo, cayenne to taste, lots of paprika, garlic powder, salt and pepper, a drained can of peas and carrots (you heard me right), and chopped boiled potatoes. When I make it, I pick a cooked rotisserie chicken. I ain't boiling no chicken.

I like to serve a couple scoops of it on a bed of romaine lettuce with some French or Western dressing drizzled around the edges, like so:



The salad is like a one-dish chicken dinner, and it is never too hot outside to eat it.

Is it a Mexican thing to do to put the peas and carrots in salads? I'm wondering, because when I was in school last year, I saw another student eating tuna salad that her husband had made. It had peas and carrots in it, and I said, "Is your husband Mexican?" She said, "Yeah! How did you know?" Huh!