When I was a kid, my family used to go to Alligator Point Beach for pretty much the whole summer. My dad would commute to TLH most weekdays and my mom always liked to have special meals ready for him when he got down there each night… it’s abour an hour drive, and she was an old school, Marion Cunningham meets Mad Men type wife.. the type of person who got gussied up to go to the supermarket, who thought it was important for the family to eat a good meal together every night, a smart and funny woman who smoked Benson & Hedges menthols and believed in “grownup cocktail hour” every night.
By the time I was in high school, my siblings were already in college, so a lot of times it was just me and my mom at the beach. We would go through magazines and cookbooks and try to come up with fun new things to try. Some of them I love to this day, but were never a hit with my dad, including Angel Hair pasta marinara and this delightful summer salad, which I believe I found in Glamour magazine. It originally called for green bell peppers and regular old vegetable oil… we tweaked it with what we had on hand, so I always make it with red bell pepper and olive oil. It’s called Kelly’s Chicken Salad because I got credit for “discovering” it.
2 whole (local, organic) chicken breasts
1/2 medium red onion, sliced in thin strips
1/2 red bell pepper
2 T olive oil
2 T tarragon vinegar
1/2 t salt
1/2 t crushed red pepper
It tastes better if you let it sit in the fridge for a while or overnight. We served it with orange and avocado slices… these days I am just as likely to just eat it right out of the bowl I made it in. Get your produce at the farmer’s market if you can, or better yet your own back yard… my brother is on a quest to not buy another piece of produce with a sticker on it, and he just might get there!
