Blue Cheese Chicken Salad Sandwiches — When the Last Tomatoes Ask to Be Seen

The shower bench was installed on Monday. A simple thing — a teak bench that fits inside the shower, with suction cups and a slatted seat that drains. Paul looked at it and said, "This is for old people." I said, "This is for people who want to shower safely." He said, "Same thing." He used it that evening. He sat on the bench and I adjusted the water and the temperature and he washed himself — mostly, with his right hand, and I helped with the parts he couldn't reach, and the helping was clinical and intimate and the intimacy was different from any intimacy we've shared. I'm bathing my husband now. Not fully — not yet — but partially. The shower bench. The reaching. The parts of his own body that his hands can't access because his hands are betraying him. And I do it with nurse's hands — steady, gentle, professional — and I do it with wife's hands — loving, private, aching — and the two kinds of hands are the same hands and the work is the same work. Paul said, after the shower, sitting on the bed in his robe: "I never thought you'd have to do this." I said, "I've been doing this for thirty-three years. You're not my first patient." He said, "I'm your most important one." I said, "By far." And we sat on the bed and he leaned against me and I held him — his tall, thin body that used to hold me — and the role reversal was complete and quiet and terrible and necessary. The garden is winding down. August is ending. The tomatoes are still producing but slower. I canned the last of the marinara on Saturday — six pints, bringing the total to fourteen for the year. The pantry is full. Winter Linda will be fed. I made a late-August dinner: BLTs — the last tomatoes of the season, the garden ones, warm from the sun, thick-sliced, on toasted rye with bacon and mayonnaise. The same meal I made two summers ago with the first tomatoes. The first and the last. The bookends. Paul ate his BLT one-handed. The tomato juice ran down his arm — his right arm, the one still working — and he didn't wipe it because wiping requires two hands and he only has one. I wiped it. With a napkin. Gently. The way you wipe a child. The way my mother wiped me. The circle. The terrible, beautiful circle. You're born needing help. You grow strong. You lose strength. You need help again. And the people who love you provide it, the way it was provided for them, and the providing is love and the love is everything and it's not enough and it's everything. BLTs. The last garden tomatoes. August ending. The circle turning.

The BLT has always been our August ritual — the one meal that insists on itself while the garden still has something left to say. This blue cheese chicken salad sandwich is what I turn to when I want that same thick, unhurried feeling of a late-summer lunch: something you build slowly, layer by layer, and eat without rushing. It isn’t the recipe for grief, but it’s the recipe for a table that still matters, and right now, that’s enough.

Blue Cheese Chicken Salad Sandwiches

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 3 cups cooked chicken breast, shredded or chopped
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/3 cup crumbled blue cheese
• 2 stalks celery, finely chopped
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• Salt to taste
• 8 slices hearty sandwich bread or toasted rye
• 4 leaves romaine or butter lettuce
• 2 medium garden tomatoes, thick-sliced

Instructions

1. Mix the salad. In a large bowl, combine shredded chicken, mayonnaise, blue cheese, celery, and green onions. Stir gently until everything is evenly coated.
2. Season. Add lemon juice, garlic powder, and black pepper. Stir again and taste for salt. Adjust as needed. If time allows, refrigerate for 10–15 minutes to let the flavors settle.
3. Toast the bread. Toast bread slices to a light golden color — enough to hold up to the filling without going brittle.
4. Build the sandwiches. Lay a lettuce leaf on four slices of bread. Spoon a generous portion of chicken salad over the lettuce. Top with two or three thick slices of garden tomato.
5. Close and serve. Place the remaining bread slices on top. Cut diagonally and serve immediately, while the toast is still warm and the tomatoes are still summer.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 480 | Protein: 36g | Fat: 22g | Carbs: 34g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 720mg