A seasonal sandwich

The weather during the fall is peculiar. Sometimes it’s hot, sometimes it’s cold; sometimes it hails bricks and is sunny 10 minutes later. It’s like all the seasons are fighting for attention in a time of change.

But, as always, it gets cold and stays cold through the winter. 

And that’s what happened to the chicken salad I made today. It got cold, and stayed cold.

And, just like the weather which doesn’t have a constant state, the cold chicken salad was introduced to a warm and easy-to-make sandwich where each flavor fought for my attention.

I’d never eaten such a thing before, but after doing a Google search I saw that I had made a common BLT chicken salad sandwich. The ingredients I used were:  olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, scallion, celery, dried cranberry (Craisin), lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, mustard, bread, bacon and chicken.

The chicken should be prepared before anything else. I must say cooking chicken is becoming second-nature; drizzle olive oil into a pan and once it gets hot add 4 cloves of chopped garlic. Then, place slices of chicken breast into the pan (I had 6). Add salt and pepper and flip it over a few times. When the chicken is getting crisp on the outside yet is still juicy inside, start to cut each piece into bite-size squares with a large fork and a sharp knife. When you’re finished, dump all of your chicken into a Ziploc bag, place it in a fridge and let it sit for a few hours. 

After the wait is over, go ahead and cut about 3 stalks of celery and 5 shoots of scallion. You can put all your chicken, celery, scallion and a small handful of Craisins into a large bowl. Then add 1 ½ cup of mayonnaise and 3 tsp. of mustard and mix it all around. That’s how simple chicken salad is. 

Set that aside and heat up a pan with olive oil. When it’s hot enough, place your strips of bacon in. You can add salt or pepper if you’d like, too. When there’s a nice crisp to your bacon strips, take them out.

Next, place 2 slices of bread into that same pan so it can absorb all those juices while it also gets toasted.

Make sure to have your finely cut tomato slices and lettuce ready, and that’s all for cooking; now you just have to construct your sandwich.

Whatever order you put it, a BLT chicken sandwich is a wonderful culmination of hot-and-cold ingredients worthy of any food lover’s palate.