Chicken Salad for the Soul

Fall had come early to Belleville. Julian swept the leaves from his stoop and flipped the sign adorning his bodega from CLOSED to OPEN. He hadn't made it to the deli counter by the time a shadowy figure burst through the door. "How fresh is your chicken salad?" she asked gravely.

"We have many different flavors, each flavor has it's own unique properties from 'freshly-killed this morning' to 'dry-aged'", Julian quipped at the customer. "For instance, our 'Fancy Vance' was slaughtered and plucked by yours truly today, 'Doug's Drugs' has been aged 39 days.

The customer looked down at his teenage son, Adam, as if to say, “Do any of those sound good to you?” Adam, of course, was oblivious and completely engrossed in TikTok. "Where did I go wrong?" the father muttered to himself.

As he looked back up at the cashier he shook his head. "Kids these days." He couldn't believe his own son was so distracted by videos showing soccer balls being cut in half, only to reveal it was a cake. And it was at this moment, he heard "Cat's in the Cradle" begin to play.

Unprepared for the incipient Verities & Balderdash he lost control of his emotions. Tears ran down his cheeks as he harkened back a time when he too was enamored with gastronomic trompe l'oeil. He thought to himself "he'd grown up just like me, my boy was just like me".

After a good cry, he snapped out of it. Was he someone that sat alone in his living room, sipping cheap whiskey and crying to an overrated Cat Stevens song, or was he a man of action? Determined to not let this situation get the best of him, he grabbed his keys and hit the road.

As he drove, his father’s dying words kept bubbling up in his mind: "you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit". He knew the way back to her heart was through her stomach. Next stop: Sal’s Deli and Plumbing Supply.

The store was one of the few that still offered a chicken salad in the back of their shop. He walked in and saw an empty table in the back. Approaching the table while equipping his pocket fork, he scanned for the bucket of pickled salad.

He settled into his usual booth. "Good evening, sir" the waiter said, his nose buried in his scratchpad, "can I start you off with a...oh, Mr. Poulet. I didn't realize...your usual sir?" T-Bone nodded subtly, never breaking gaze with his pocket fork, "and make it a real Ch0nker."

He would never let anyone know, but being recognized by a waiter always thrilled T-Bone. It made him feel special. Loved. But he didn't linger on these feelings. He needed to prepare himself for the feast to come.

However, as foretold by Dr. (honorary, Central State U 1989) Michael Gerard Tyson, our man T-Bone's preparations dissolved the moment the Wagyu (inauthentic as it happened; despite his name, he pursued a lifelong ignorance of the butcherous arts) punched him in the mouth. Lawd!

"So you're telling me that after all this massaging, marinating, and aging, this thing still tastes like chicken? They should give ME a PhD for my chicken salad recipe. 4.95 out of 5 stars from 15k reviews on my food blog ohlawdhecoming.com. Beat that."

The grizzled old chef wriggled his nose, looked begrudgingly at the entitled millennial, and reached into his satchel. Pushing aside pouches of ready-to-eat chonk light Chicken-of-the-Land® corporate food rations, he retrieved a note yellowed with age. It was his secret recipe.

The scrawny millennial had been trying to bulk for years, but the protein shakes had no effect on his frail physique. He had seen the chef’s cat, the main beneficiary of the regime, and knew he had found the answer: - 4 cp Crisco - 14 strips bacon - 2 lt. Pepsi - Blend and enjoy