Bank of Holly Springs

Close to Nowhere

Dill pickles and peanut butter

I have a big bowl of chicken salad in my refrigerator. It’s a big bowl because I can’t learn to cook for just me and son Kris – especially since Kris usually won’t eat leftovers.

I rarely make chicken salad without thinking about the late Dr. Al Hale, a well-loved dentist who owned Grey Gables and had a fantastic collection of Sevres porcelain.

One Pilgrimage, many years ago, Dr. Hale gave me his chicken salad recipe to put in the Pilgrimage edition of the paper. The one thing that was definite was the chicken. For true Southern chicken salad you only used the breast. He often included fruit – grapes or apples, and walnuts. I wish I could find his recipe. Using that recipe, my chicken salad was great. The big bowl in my refrigerator is good though.

Summertime food is always good. Tomato sandwiches are probably the best thing, but there’s fried okra and squash cooked many different ways, and cantaloupe and watermelon and peaches.

Squash is such a versatile vegetable. One of my favorite ways to cook and eat squash is something I call primavera. Cook a large amount of yellow squash (or whatever suits your fancy) with onions in butter and chicken stock. Put lots of garlic in there too. Just as the squash is tender, I like to chop up tomatoes and stir them in just until they’re warm. Spinach is good mixed in also.

You should have a buttery, garlicy, sauce in the pot. Cook some pasta (I like angel hair, but again, your preference) and put the squash on top of the pasta and eat until you’re sick. At least, that’s what I do.

And I have to share one more recipe. This has been circulating on Facebook the past week or so. I’ve been eating it since I was born, I guess.

My mother was a Yankee and maybe she brought this South with her. Kosher dill pickle and peanut butter sandwiches are absolutely delicious. Mama would give me and my sister some money and we would walk to the corner store and get a couple of those big dill pickles. Mama would slice the pickles and put them on peanut butter sandwiches and we were all happy. My brother Dennis said he still eats peanut butter and pickles also.

Now I’m hungry. And I’m tired of chicken salad. Where’s my peanut butter?

 

Holly Springs South Reporter

P.O. Box 278
Holly Springs, MS 38635
PH: (662) 252-4261
FAX: (662) 252-3388
www.southreporter.com