INGREDIENTS:

4 cups cooked chicken, diced (prefer grilled chicken breast) with Wild Bill's Meat Rub
3 hard boiled eggs, chopped
2 tablespoons sweet salad pickle cubes
1 cup celery, diced
1/2 cup toasted chopped walnuts, pecans or almond slivers or a combination as desired
1/4 cup red onion, diced
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 cup seedless red grapes, diced or halved
1 cup diced Honeycrisp, Fuji or Gala apple (prefer Honeycrisp)
1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon Kosher or Sea Salt (to taste)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper corns (Tellicherry) to taste
White granulated sugar (optional) to taste
Lettuce
Bread of your choice (used Ciabatta)

Mix mayonnaise and lemon juice together in a large mixing bowl  Add the balance of ingredients except the lettuce and bread and toss to combine.  Adjust salt, black pepper and sugar to taste.   If mixture is too thick, add additional mayonnaise.   Allow to chill in refrigerator for a few hours before serving.   Using your bread of choice, spread a light layer of mayonnaise on each piece of bread. Place a leaf of lettuce on lower half of bread and add a generous amount of chicken salad and top with the other half of bread.

YIELD: 6 large servings

I had to substitute chopped fresh parsley for fresh basil since no food chain store in our town had any in stock...so much for small town USA...grin if you must!  Another pix of the plated chicken salad sandwich. 

Above chicken salad sandwich prepared on 08-08-12 and "off the chain good."

Above chicken salad sandwich prepared on 07-03-14 and was "fantastic."  I chopped the ingredients coarse for more texture and like it better this way.

This recipe is from our Porter home cookbook which is a large three ringed binder with the recipes covered in plastic, however I changed the amount of chicken and added the fruit and nuts.  The grilled chicken with my Wild Bill's Meat Rub adds additional flavor and textures to this recipe versus boiled or baked chicken.  You can add additional seasonings to suit your own taste buds.  Give this one a try; OUTSTANDING!   A special thank you to Ken LeVan of Shunk, Pa. for his professional help via telephone and the internet to help improve the quality of my home food pictures...I don't have a studio or proper lighting equipment and improvising but plan to get a better lighting and camera set-up since I enjoy cooking and posting recipes and pictures.   Grin if you must!  Click on sequence thumbnails below for a larger view:

The chicken breast that I used were fairly large and chopped up only three of them which yielded a little over 4 cups.

Web posted by Bill aka Mickey Porter 08-07-12 and updated with pixs on 08-08-12 and 07-03-14.

LEAVING ON A SPIRITUAL NOTE