Chicka-Chicka Salad {Taste & Create}

This is my third month participating in Taste and Create - a fun, low-key recipe swap where I cook from one blogger's posts and she cooked from mine. I was assigned to No Reason Needed.

My eyes immediate fell on this recipe - No Reason Needed's Chicka-Chicka Salad - because my boys loved that book when they were small.



Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is written by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault and illustrated by Lois Ehlert. It's a sweet, colorful alphabet book full of rhymes that makes kids giggle.

"Whee!" said D to E F G, "I'll beat you to the top of the coconut tree."

I digress. This is about the recipe and the food...but I thought I should explain why I picked the recipe that I did, especially in light of the fact that her review of the recipe was tepid.

I whipped this up as a quick mid-week lunch and served it on crackers. We really liked it. Her recipe used only cranberries, celery, and mayo; I subbed fennel for the celery and then added in some other flavors to make it a little bit more exciting. This is a super easy, but super tasty chicken salad.

Boiled or roasted chicken, chopped
fennel, chopped
dried cranberries
pecans, chopped
minced garlic
mayonnaise
stone ground mustard
salt
pepper
fresh oregano
splash of olive oil

That's it. Play with the proportions - if it's too liquidy, add more chicken; if it's too dry, add more mayo or olive oil.