Photo credit, caribbeanpot.com

This recipe is from my home country. Growing up in Barbados we always had our own vegetables and raised chickens. This recipe is one of the ways to make the recipe using the same methods and similar ingredients. We didn’t use lemons, because we had limes. We used lots of green onions because we grew them. You can add a little fresh thyme and pepper when you cook the chicken for more flavour. It tastes different here, in Canada, because the chicken and vegetables we had were always very fresh (not frozen). It is very good served with sweet potato. Enjoy!

I first tasted this delicious salad at my sister Mireille’s. It is part of a cookbook that her friend Jude Rand wrote for her sons. Jude writes, at the beginning of her cookbook:

“When our first-born went off to university in 1998, it occurred to me that our family’s recipes would get lost if I didn’t make an effort to write them down.  So that year, I started this collection of our favourites and I gave our son Kyo a copy of the first edition for Christmas. I updated it four years later when his brother Michel went off to college, and I have updated it a couple of times since. 

Jude first emailed the cookbook to a few friends, including my sister, who had heard about this endeavour. Through word of mouth (no pun intended!), and thanks to the internet, it has become part of  many a family’s standard fare, including mine! Jude obtained this particular chicken salad from a caterer in Ottawa, where she and her family lived for a while. It is so simple, refreshing, nutritious, and tasty! I have prepared it many times and each time it reminds me of Jude and of my sister.