My Cherry Chicken Salad Days Are Over

I am very lucky to live in a region where my two favorite seasons collide. Of course I am referring to Michigan cherry season and Christmas in July (see Do Ahead Holiday Casserole). We take a yearly pilgrimage to the Northern Lake Michigan shore to eat our weight in sweet cherries - abundantly available from local grower's roadside stands. But my real guilty pleasure is cherry chicken salad sandwiches. My first stop is always Riverside Deli in picturesque Glen Arbor (indeed, Good Morning America voted it "Most Beautiful Place in America" so you know it has to be good). At this little carry out place on the bank if the Crystal River, you wouldn't expect to find such a carefully crafted (and wrapped - they tie it up with a pretty ribbon) sandwich. Homemade seven grain bread, sliced thick, to house what can only be described as heaven. They distinguish themselves by using fresh cherries, along with pecans, celery (which is usually the bane of my existence but here provides the perfect crunch), fresh greens, and chicken, of course. A close runner up, and usually my second vacation day lunch is the cherry chicken salad wrap at The Cove in Leland, a few miles to the north. The twist here - besides it being a wrap - is that they use dried cherries. Still sweet and savory with cherry/mayo one-two punch, it adds a slightly different dimension to the texture. A fleeting season, it comes but once a year, gone before you know it.

"That's when I knew my salad days were over" is one of my all-time favorite movie movie lines from the Cohen brothers tour de force Raising Arizona.Turns out the phrase has it's origins in Shakespeare, but it was a crazed Nicholas Cage that introduced it to me.The 1987 screwball comedy about a "reformed" ex-con, his infertile police woman wife (who thought havin a critter was the next logical step), quintuplets, and escaped criminals who emerge from the primordial ooze to wreak havoc. Hi and Ed, unable to conceive and unfit to adopt, decide to kidnap a baby that is one of a set of quints, reasoning that those parents 'have more than they can handle'. Ed, directing Hi to "get me one of them babies" sets off a string of events that includes diaper theft, bank robbery, high speed chases, pursuit by a Harley riding bounty hunter, bizarre dream sequences, and a seemingly happy ending once the ill-gotten infant is returned to his birth parents. My salad days, when I was green in judgement, and cold in blood....

The Recipe:

4 cups cooked, cubed chicken

1/2 cup pecans, coarsely chopped
1 rib celery, finely diced
2 medium shallots, minced
3/4 cup dried or fresh sweet Michigan Cherries
1/3 cup light mayonnaise
1/3 cup fat free Greek yogurt
3 tbsp. white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
Some really good bread, sliced thick

Combine all ingredients and adjust any seasonings as needed. You can eat it immediately, but I like to let the flavors develop a little while before eating. So I suggest letting it sit in the fridge for about 30 minutes or so before eating! Makes 4 sandwiches.