Peer Pressure, dinner edition

My friend Brenda called today.

"GIRL, my kids are bored. What are you doin' today?"

"Not a thing. Bring 'em on over."

So she did. They came and played and laughed for about two hours, during which I was making my not-so-famous, but quite yummy, chicken salad.

Brenda and I had already had a food discussion earlier. She was planning to make chicken and dumplings for dinner and had planned to use (gasp!) bullion cubes for her "stock." Oh, no. No. No. No. That's not right.

I had cooked my chicken in the crock pot overnight, and I was only planning to freeze the stock, so I offered it to Brenda instead. (It's one of those crazy things I do, but yes Michael, I do use it.)

So when Brenda got to my house, conversation naturally turned to food preparation. One of the first things I asked was, "When is your mama's garden going to start producing!?!" (I've had a craving for fried green tomatoes.) Sadly, not yet, but hopefully soon. I love those fried green tomatoes, and I haven't had any since last year, when Mrs Vira's garden got going. We talked tomatoes and squash and snap beans and sugar snap peas and more.

And we talked chicken salad, since I was in the middle of making it. I gave her the rundown of the recipe, which is really just more of a guide, like all of my made-up recipes.

Tonight I called her to see how the dumplings turned out, since she was using my stock.

"Oh, please. I gave up on the dumpling idea. You'll never guess what I made instead. Chicken salad. And potato salad and sugar snap peas. All of that talk made me do it! The dumplings can wait for another time."