Try New Things

Last weekend, my friend Kellory invited me and a few other ladies to a design swap. It was a lot of fun but intimidating as I needed to google "design swap" and ended up at this article on Design*Sponge which made me feel really excited and also really flattered. I think Kellory has incredible taste and design is kind of Staci's thing. I've always had a style-crush on Kendra and Lisa, too (now you know), and so I felt pretty special to be invited amongst such creative ladies. It was fun to get together and hang out and do something different from what we're used to. All you have to do is bring a few things that you're tired of looking at, sit around and talk and "shop" and nom with your friends and then you get to come home with something new! It's perfect. I got some stuff I'm pretty pumped about.

I got this smoke glass bowl. Banana not included.

I got this piece of fabric that fits my little window perfectly.

 I got some other things but they just didn't photograph well. One day.

And of course we brought food. Kendra asked for my recipe for the Avocado Chicken Salad that came with me and so I guess this whole post is for her. I just kind of made it up as I went along and since I still had all of the stuff in my kitchen, I just re-made it so that I could remember what I did. Here you go, my friends.

 

The end result of this recipe is something akin to what might happen if a bowl of guacamole and a chicken salad sandwich made a love child. Lots of avocado, lots of cilantro, lots of happy feels. I used 1/2 a rotisserie chicken but I would imagine that if you didn't want to stand at your counter for fifteen minutes with two forks, shredding breasts and still wanted a very similar result, canned chicken or any leftovers you may have after grilling out would work just as well. Okay, so here we go:

 

Gather: 

2 T. chopped cilantro (or more if you love cilantro like I do)

2 cloves minced garlic

1/2 cup sour cream (greek yogurt would be an excellent substitute)

2 T. milk

Salt and pepper to taste

 

2 cups shredded chicken

1 avocado (diced)

1 roma tomato

1/2 red onion

lime juice

More cilantro for garnish

 

Assemble:

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine your sour cream, cilantro, garlic and salt and pepper, add milk to thin out the dressing. Add the chicken and stir it all up so that the chicken is completely coated. Cover the bowl in plastic wrap and set it in the fridge for at least 1/2 an hour or overnight if it's more convenient. You want the dressing to get kind of soaked up into the chicken.

When you're nearing serving time, dice your avocado, tomato and onion all about the same size and sprinkle with a good amount of lime juice. Stir it all up with the chicken and dressing and serve to your friends on sandwiches or wrapped in lettuce leaves. If it's a little dry, add in a little more milk or juice. There are tons of add-in's, too. I thought bacon would be delicious but I wasn't interested in adding to the fat content or firing up my stove, so it was left as-is and that was really good.

 

Of course if you take this to a picnic, keep it chilled so that no one gets food poisoning and dies because, seriously, who could live with that?

Have you ever been to a swap? Book swap, clothing swap, design swap?
Everyone has their thing, what weird stuff do you throw into chicken salad?