Chicken Salad from Providence United Methodist Cookbook, Providence, SC

I've been thinking about sharing some of my favorite old church cookbook recipes. These recipes I'm sharing are ones we've tried and tweaked.  I'll give you my variations.  We will start with one of my favorite cookbooks from the South Carolina Lowcountry. This was Momma's cousin's church.  Those ladies of Providence were some of the best cooks I've ever run across.

It was in a farmhouse with the Four Holes Swamp for a back yard in Holly Hill, SC that I learn how to can tomatoes while all the farm hands and wives were in the packing house of the truck farm, preparing shipments of tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers for the farmers market and supermarkets.  About the time I got a bushel of tomatoes done, somebody would pull up the sandy driveway and tote a couple more bushels up the back steps to the porch. Ugh! That was a lot of hard, hot work for a 15-year-old, canning and babysitting in the SC Lowcountry in July.

*****Cousin Lois' Chicken Salad (my variations in parentheses)*****

• 1 hen, 4 or 5 lbs, boned and chopped. (Buy a rotisserie chicken and bone it. Costco has the best deal on chickens. Save the bones and skin to boil for extra broth.  Use this for moisture so you won't need as much mayo as Lois uses, about half.)
• 1 bunch of celery (chopped fine)
• 1 ½ cups chopped pickles (optional)
• 1 qt. Duke’s Mayonnaise ( half this)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• (I add a finely chopped sweet onion and a Granny Smith Apple sometimes.)

Lois, a Winthrop Home Economics graduate, grew up in Taylors, SC.  She worked for the Clemson Extension Service then married Raymond West from Holly Hill.  She was a member of the Master Farm Homemakers Guild and served as their president for a while.  Between Lois and Momma, I had some of the best homemaking instructors in SC.  There is a lot of physics and chemistry in Home Economics.  She is still serving her community by baking cakes to fund college scholarships for local young people.