Turkey Salad

This has become one of my favorite meals. I have never been a big fan of Turkey salad or chicken salad. It always tasted like a tin can or it was so creamy squishy that it was more like tuna salad than anything chicken or turkey related.

Then one day when I went home (to Michigan) I was going through "Foods For Living" a healthy foods type of grocery store, and I came across the prepackaged foods section. These were foods that were made and packaged right there inside the store. The turkey salad looked wonderful! Nice big chunks of turkey. Fresh looking celery. Dots of beautiful red and surrounded in mayo. I love mayo. (NBU people, just turn away from the Mayo comment, please.)

After eating the most delicious turkey salad I had ever had, I looked at the ingredients. Turkey, celery, red onions, dried cranberries, walnuts, salt and pepper. I wrote them down. I kid you not. I took out my post-it pad from purse, grabbed a sharpie (also from my purse) and wrote down those incredible ingredients to take home with me.

I now make the BEST turkey salad ever. In this bowl you will find turkey cubes (that I got from the freezer because we didn't have any fresh turkey or chicken today.) I should have drained the turkey a bit, since it was frozen, but it's still great.

OK, so turkey cubes (about 1½ cups of cubed turkey), 1 cup of chopped celery and ½ cup of chopped onion. I use vidalia onions when I can get them, but the sweetest onions possible would be best. We've used green onions before and I didn't like it as well.
Next I chop up about ½ cup of walnuts and if I was taking this to a party or something, I'd add in a full cup of dried cranberries. Now that I have diabetes, the cranberries do a number on my blood sugar readings, so I just have a few and save the rest for my husband. But don't skimp on the cranberries if you can help it, they really make the salad.

Next you need to give this salad a little black pepper. Now if you are a family member reading this, I do actually hold the pepper grinder over this salad and give it a few turns. It absolutely needs it. White pepper doesn't even seem to do the trick. (I don't like pepper in any form, but my father taught the family to trick me with white pepper, so I couldn't see it to pick it out! - but now I even do it to myself) However, you have to have black pepper. Normally I don't salt this salad at all, but that's because I don't use salt much anymore, but my husband, would salt this.

I put in as little mayo as possible and stir and stir and stir until everything is coated. I used probably a ¼ cup. My husband would have used an entire cup. The turkey was a little wet (because of it being previously frozen) so my mayo went a long way this time.
I served it up on this tiny little condiment dish and had to take a picture of it. Then I ate it. I usually like to let the flavors marry for a few hours in the fridge before I have any though - so make this early in the day so you can eat it for lunch.

I usually grab a huge handful of butter lettuce from the fridge, toss in a nice spoonful of the turkey salad and wash it all down with a nice glass of water.

One could almost imagine summer.

Kristin

We buy a whole turkey or just a turkey brest and cook that for a meal - the leftovers get cubed and saved for turkey salad. When I make this using chicken, I usually buy a bunch of chicken breast, cook them all up and once again, whatever is left over from supper, gets made into heaven.