Thanksgiving this year was odd in all regards. I made chicken breasts earlier in the week, and ate a couple “Thanksgiving-like” meals with cranberry sauce (my favorite after dressing!), green beans with french fried onions (not a casserole – just sprinkled on top of plain green beans, which was tasty enough!), dressing (lots, since I like this best of all for the herbs used in it), pureed sweet potatoes (simply made with salt, pepper, butter but not the peanut butter I usually like to put in sweet potatoes), and acorn squash (also a favorite that I prepared simply with just salt, pepper, and butter).

I didn’t fix potatoes or dessert, mostly because I had too much of everything else. I don’t like to make so much food I’m eating on the same foods after two days. Nor do I freeze leftovers because I’ve found all that does is preserve them till I toss them out months later…! Fixing meals for one requires a bit of waste if one isn’t careful! The breasts came three (large!) breasts to a package, so I had one left headed into the last day I’d eat one as a leftover.

After two meals of pre-Thanksgiving chicken, I was ready for something different that I could have for lunch, maybe even supper if I didn’t get through it at noon. Chicken salad seemed my best bet for something simple that I could combine with ingredients on hand yet not make so much I ended up wasting part of it.

So, here’s what I put in my chicken salad: cubed chicken breast, cinnamon applesauce (about 1/4 cup), crumbled pecans (lots – I break them up in my hands), fine-shredded carrot (about one medium carrot, mostly for color), cranberry raisins (a nod to the season, and to add texture and a little tartness), powdered ginger (because it adds a little zing to food and I love the combination of chicken and ginger), mayonnaise, salt, and pepper. I don’t use recipes for the most part. When I do I usually add or modify the recipe “to taste”!

Fortunately, I thought the salad tasted just fine, surprise, surprise! I ate it with crackers and mashed potatoes. (What?!) Yeah, it was a strange meal. I had cranberry juice mixed half and half with diet Seven-Up, a further strangeness that somehow worked: This was not your standard Thanksgiving!