Around our home we seem to make many appetizers especially for birthday’s and holiday parties.  Over the years we have learned to be more frugal with our appetizers as our family has grown and we realize they can get expensive.  We try to make appetizers that are low cost and make a lot of them.  Chicken salad is a favorite of ours and there are so many variations to making it.  This is how our family enjoys it:

• shredded chicken, we cook ours and then put in the food processor or you can use canned chicken
• red grapes
• sliced almonds
• green onions
• canned orange segments
• celery
• miracle whip
• nonfat yogurt, if you want to be healthier

Everyone is going to make theirs differently.  I start by placing my shredded chicken into a bowl, add some grapes that have been cut in half, sprinkle in some sliced almonds, cut some green onions, add a can of orange segments–drained, and cut up a piece of celery. You can then add miracle whip salad dressing until your mixture is coated.  If you want a healthier route without sacrificing the taste add half nonfat yogurt and half salad dressing.

We like to put this on saltine crackers to eat, sometimes we get crescent rolls, other times we thinly slice apples and place it on top.  Either way it is delicious.

We love making appetizers for our party celebrations.  This recipe was one that we tried this past Christmas and my husband absolutely loves it.  Very simple to make.

You will need:

• jar of refrigerated whole kosher dill pickles
• 1 pkg of cream cheese
• 1 pkg of ham lunch meat, look for the rectangle shaped one.  It makes rolling easier.

Pat dry your pickles and wipe on the cream cheese.  I say that lightly, it is hard to spread cream cheese onto a pickle.  We actually ended up laying out the piece of ham and putting a big blob of cream cheese onto it, and then rolled the pickle up in it.  Wasn’t very proper but it did the job.  I then placed them on a plate, covered them, and put them in the refrigerator overnight.  The next day I took them out and sliced them up into chunks.  This makes a whole lot of appetizers especially for a large family.