RECIPE: Egg Salad

One of our favorite lunches on Fridays during Lent is egg salad. This is one of those beloved comfort foods, for me dating back to my college days at Ball State. My friend Jennifer and I would lug all our books down to the Dugout, a little cafe in the basement of Studebaker Hall where she lived and sit in a booth and study, eating egg salad sandwiches on white bread with glasses of the coldest milk ever. Dee-licious! Those were happy days, fondly remembered. Jen, who was worried back then that she'd fail out of the BSN program for lack of being able to administer an injection into an orange, is now a nurse at a big hospital in Indianapolis. And I am, well, me.

I don't really have a recipe for this, so all amounts are approximate. If it isn't creamy enough for your liking, add another dollop of mayonnaise. If you prefer it less tart, cut back on the mustard. That's one of the great beauties of egg salad -- you can adjust the ingredients in various ways and still have a tasty final product. We've found that the only thing you can really add too much or too little of is salt.

Egg Salad

6 eggs, hard cooked and de-shellified

3/4 c. mayonnaise

2 T mustard + a couple of extra squirts

1/4 tsp celery seed (can substitute one stalk of diced celery)

1/2 tsp dried dill weed, crushed

salt to taste (eggs need a lot of salt, so add, stir and taste until you have it as you like it. Ha! I threw some Shakespeare in there!)

Optional ingredient: stir in about ten sliced green pimiento olives. Make sure to cut down on the salt you add if you choose this option


In a medium-sized mixing bowl, smoosh eggs with a fork. Or if you have one of those fancy chopper doo-dads like my mom does, use that instead. Add remaining ingredients, except for salt. Add salt in 1/8 teaspoon increments and stir, tasting after each addition.

Makes six nice sandwiches. Serve on toasted bread or on plain, soft white Wonder Bread. In the summer, however, this is also really good on a quartered ripe tomato.