You know me and the chicken salad. You know because we’re like this. Oh wait you don’t know that because a) I am a mystery to you, shrouded in secret sauce, and b) this chicken salad thing is a pretty recent development. A pretty important development.

It all started at Christmas where my new father-in-law bought a giant tub of it to shove down the maws of the 90 people staying at his house, because scooping a blob of this stuff onto a roll is smart, lo-fi, and efficient food distribution. But I was all: This chicken salad can basically go sit on it because JGA here is not about the mayo-salad things, not potato salad or tuna salad or egg salad or anything of the even-more-dubious riffs which I will not address by name but OK marshmallow and grated carrot I am looking over at you over there.

But I grit my teeth and take a bite (not in that order!) because they’re already looking for an excuse to kick me out of this family and I’m like: Dear Jesus, I am offering you my open palm in the hopes that you will high-five me as we celebrate, together, the majesty of this world and the flavor sensation of both this chicken salad sandwich and your own kick-ass coke-fueled holy jazziness.

Because see I’m all about the sandwiches, but I have to admit their one key failing is that you have to keep like 5-6 different ingredients on hand in order to have a really successful sandwich, and lacking even one can result in disappointment and maybe even total abandonment (like that Miracle Whip commercial where the guy assembles a full-on sandwich sextravaganza but then realizes there’s no mayo and he sadly puts everything back in the fridge and probably goes and batters something to death). But with chicken salad, it’s all in one nasty blob, and even if you’re out of bread you can kind of just eat it solo and still get that Sandwich Feeling. The end.