There’s one meal that reminds of high school: a chicken salad bagel sandwich with a gigundo iced coffee from our town’s local hangout….errr…bagel shop. Don’t get me started on surviving high school in a town where the cool place to hang is a bagel shop. Despite our uncool status, we did have insane bagels and monster-sized sandwiches piled high with chicken salad and unlimited pickles, sprouts, cucumbers, tomatoes, and lettuce.
There was only one problem: the wait.
This bagel shop is quite possibly one of the slowest places on earth. Watch the paint dry/water boil slow. Yet people will wait 20, 30, 40 minutes for their bagel.
Unfortunately I wasn’t exactly born with the patience gene (my mom has been known to leave said bagel shop without bagels). Like many of us, I want what I want and I want it right now. My impatience isn’t just with long lines or slow sandwich-makers, but also with life. I may be alone, but I’m pretty sure adulthood’s hardest lesson is learning that not everything comes at once, even if you’ve followed the “perfect path” – college, grad school, living in sin, marriage, whatever.
If I have to practice patience in life, I should probably learn to do it while waiting for the cashier to ring up my bulk cashew purchase, and I should definitely learn to do it when reliving my chicken salad bagel days.
Luckily this raw, vegan recipe requires little to no patience, and while it doesn’t quite taste like the sandwich I remember (probably because kale is the new bagel), it’s good enough to enjoy slowly.
Practice Patience Mock Chicken Salad
(raw, vegan)
(yields about 2 1/2 cups)
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup almonds, soaked and rinsed if you have the patience
- 1/2 cup cashews, see above
- 1/2 cup pecans, see above
- 1 carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
- 1 stalk of celery, roughly chopped
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 1/4 t dried dill
- 1/4 t salt
- 1/4 t herbamare seasoning, optional (other all-purpose seasoning would work)
- 1 apple, roughly chopped
- 1 cup organic red seedless grapes, quartered
1. Add the almonds, cashews, pecans, carrot, celery, dill, salt, herbamare, and lemon juice to a food processor. Pulse until just broken down. You’re going for a sort of (apology in advance for the word to follow) chunky texture.
2. Add the apple and pulse until the apple is broken up a bit. You may have to push down sides to make sure everything is thoroughly combined.
3. Remove from food processor and stir in grapes.
Serve over greens, wrap it in a collared green, or wait in line for your favorite bagel.
May patience be with you.
Looks and sounds just delicious!
Patience is absolutely not a virtue of mine, but med school is forcing me to learn it fast.
It’s a good one to learn, but I can’t say I’m very good at it. Practice makes perfect, I suppose.
Brings back the memories of skipping my 7th period study to beat the after-school line at said bagel shop for some delicious hawaiian chocolate iced coffee. Yum…
You beat me to it! I was saving the skipping of class for another post. I may have conned teachers into giving me passes to get out of class. Shhh. Yes, their iced coffee is ridiculously good.
No wonder all of the teachers that you had hated me once I got into their class…
Law school beat the worst of my impatience out of me, but I am still a pretty impatient person
Love this recipe.
I’m so glad you left a comment on my blog so I could come and check out yours! I shall be following you, indeed
So, it looks like my children were skipping class…very interesting!
Yes, the service was so incredibly slooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwww, but I do remember very good chicken salad.
YUM! That looks amazing. Thanks for sharing.
Wow this looks absolutley delicious!
Thanks so much!!
Hi! I am doing a raw food week and I was wanting to find a mock chicken raw salad. I used yours with the following alterations: Cut back on the amount of cashews. Used pepitas instead of pecans. Skipped Herbamare *for lack thereof* and added Kelp seasoning. Skipped grapes and added pomegranate seeds instead. Served on savoy cabbage leaves. While my nuts and seeds were soaking, I chopped up my veggies and apples in the NINJA. Total time: 15 minutes or less.