Curried Chicken and Grape Salad (Steph)

Sarah and Amber hosted a baby shower for Melanie this past weekend and asked Dorthy, Mom and I to help out with food.  I made a curried chicken salad that I found in A Decade of Cooking: The COSTCO Way and thought I'd share the recipe with anyone who might be interested.  Here it is.

Approx 2 lbs cooked chicken breast (about 4)*
1 cup red or green seedless grapes, halved
1/2 cup diced dried apricots
1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1/2 cup diced celery
1/2 cup thinly sliced green onions
Lettuce for serving**

Dressing
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 teaspoons honey
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons lime juice

-Cube chicken meat.
-Place the chicken in a large bowl and add grapes, apricots, red onion, raisins, pine nuts, celery and green onions. Toss gently.
-To prepare dressing, combine all ingredients and mix well.
-Pour dressing over the chicken salad and toss until the mixture is coated
-Serve on lettuce

*Recipe calls for one whole roasted chicken, but I only had breast meat
**Recipe suggests butter lettuce, but I served it on pieces of romaine.  It's also good on top of a bed of greens.

Book Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Steph)

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

By Ransom Riggs

 4 ½ of 5 thumbs up

Jacob Portman was a young man with his future laid before his feet.  As an heir to a drug store empire, Jacob has gone through the motions of life, without any excitement or aspirations of his own.  Growing up, Jacob was regaled with far-fetched stories, and photographs, of his grandfather’s childhood and the youngsters he grew up with. Many of these young friend’s had special powers or talents (or so Jacob’s grandfather said) that Jacob believed at first but as he grew older, knew that the accounts must have been made up, and the fanciful pictures fabricated.  It’s not until the grisly murder of Jacob’s grandfather by an otherworldly creature that Jacob decides to travel to Wales to attempt to sort out his grandfather’s past. 

The one aspect that makes this book such a delight to read is the photographs.  The author, Riggs, is a photograph collector and initially intended to make this a picture book for children, but instead gathered more pictures from a different collector and developed a story around them.  The photos are all antique, black and white, and strange. Because of this, some of them are extremely creepy.

Funny side-note: I read the eBook version on our tablet and before a picture is shown, the text would end before reaching the bottom of the screen and before the chapter felt like it was over, so I knew when the photos were coming.  I would get so anxious about what photo that would pop up when I tapped the screen that my heart would race and the pictures would sometimes startle me. It was like waiting-for-the-toast- to-pop-up effect.  (Trust me; I know how ridiculous I am.  Feel free to laugh at my expense.)

That being said, the photos add a sense of tangibility to the story that most books don’t have, which makes it fun and engaging.  An untitled sequel is to be released in January of 2014.