Baby Shower Chicken Salad

My momma hollered at me the other day and asked me if I could make some chicken salad for a baby shower she was throwing. Truth told I’m in the throes of writing a book and don’t have much time for fooling around but hey, this is my momma asking, and no good southern boy worth his weight in biscuits can rightly say no to his momma unless he’s being held hostage or bleeding internally, so I obliged.

It may seem foreign to some men, but I have always been a fool for kitchen work. It, of course, was my momma that taught me the ways of puttin together a meal for a group of folk but now that I’m out on my own I still find joy in doing so. Making Chicken Salad really ain’t that much of a task if you ask me, you just cook a couple of breasts up or if you’re in a pinch, snag a rotisserie from the grocery store. Slap some mayonnaise in there (Dukes is my preference) cut up a few grapes and toss in a variety of spices. I don’t have anything written down but I think I always go with some garlic powder, onion powder, some Tony Chachere's, fresh ground pepper, some lemon zest, and a little bit of honey to balance it all out. People tend to overlook how much a little sweet will do to cut through all the other tastes. The world is a melting pot and so should your chicken salad be.

I assume Momma put it on some buttery croissants but I can’t be too sure because even as social distancing mandates become relaxed, I still try and stay as far away from baby showers as I can. They’ve never made much sense to me. “Oh you’re having a baby? Cool… have it somewhere over there please. Thank you”.

But lord knows people in the south take their baby showers as seriously as the Greeks take their olives. I know Momma had custom cookies made and there were pink and white cupcakes as far as the eye could see. The momma-to-be sat there at the head of the table and all her friends went back and forth passing her boxes of diapers wrapped in pretty pink and white wrapping paper topped with the prettiest bows you ever did see.

The veterans of the bunch who have been through this before chimed in ad nauseam about how lucky the new crop has it raising a baby these days. You see, back in their day, the doctors could smoke, and there weren’t any Ipads to keep them kids company when you wanted to go out back and have a pull from an Arbor Mist bottle. They were all on their own and times were lean.

I poke fun at them and maybe that’s because I’ll never know what it’s like to grow life in this beer-filled nightmare I call a belly. Perhaps it really is a joy to sit amongst your contemporaries and know you are a vessel and contributor to this thing we call life. All I know is that my wife texted me and said that everyone really enjoyed my chicken salad. Maybe They’ll name the baby after me.

‘Corey