This summer, I became the owner of one of those cutesy wicker picnic baskets
We can take picnic basket down the street to the river and set up shop on a gigantic bench, or we can head to a park and lay out a nice wool blanket. This is all fine and dandy, but what to put inside the thing?
Bad Features in a Picnic:
- Stuff that can fall on you and stain things
- Stuff that requires lots of serving utensils (they are not fun to pack up dirty, and they complicate things)
- Stuff that needs to be really hot or really cold. Keeping things that way is tricky.
Good Features in a Picnic:
- Delicious food you actually want to eat
- Self-contained things
- Things you can pick at (hmmm, did picnic come from there? I bet it did! )
- Wine. Always.
I love wine, so that’s pretty much a given. Obviously, you have to keep your destination in mind, ensuring it is somewhere where you won’t get in tonnes of trouble for having a bevvy or two. I’m lucky in that my town is pretty lax, as long as you are generally behaving yourself.
How to Pack a Picnic for Adults: Food
To me, the best picnics have delicious food and require an absolute minimum of effort. That’s where tapas-style food steps in. Here’s what I like to pack in a picnic:
- Olives – The best part is that I’m the only one that eats them.
- Cured meat – summer sausage, salami, etc. Something that will stand up even if it gets pretty warm.
- Cheese – pick one, or several. Yum, yum, yum.
- Baguette – So versatile and rather affordable!
- Crackers – Very affordable and comes with lots of flavour choices. They also don’t go bad easily.
- Dips – Grab some protein in the form of hummus, pick up a spinach and artichoke dip, baba ganoush, whatever you’d like to grab from the deli section.
- Cherry tomatoes – these little guys add in some vegetables (fruit, if you’re going to be that person), are self-contained and are delicious little pops of flavour. They’re also grab and go.
That should provide you with more than enough variety, while staying moderately healthy (more veggies would be a rather good idea) and best of all, it’s grab and go from the grocery store. That means that having a picnic can be a spur of the moment, “isn’t it gorgeous? Let’s do something fun outside!” type of things.
We all know how romantic and fun spur of the moment decisions can be!
What are your favourite picnic foods? When was the last time you went on a picnic? What do you have to say about picnics?
As you can tell, I’m kind of on a picnic spurt at the moment, and think that they are pretty darn awesome.
My husband and I like to order subs and take those on our adventures. We haven’t done a picnic before but that sounds like a fun idea. Maybe we’ll give it a whirl since we’ve moved to a new state. It’d be nice to have a lunch while exploring a new park area. A proper picnic would be perfect!
It’s actually quite fun, I wasn’t expecting it to be so much fun. It’s a great way to enjoy the scenery, people watch and get out and see your area.
It’s kind of sad, but I always find it easiest to get food from a restaurant/take-out place and bring it on a picnic :0 It just really simplifies things. But yes, wine, always.
DC @ Young Adult Money recently posted…Should you Donate Money When you are in Debt?
Hey, that works for me, too!
You forgot the crudites! I love baby carrots and broccoli personally. But mushrooms and celery would also be great with the cherry tomatoes. Also, I always pack extra napkins, wet naps & Tide-To-Go with me. Cause I’m messy. XD
The Asian Pear recently posted…In the Pond: Clueless
Veg-e-ta-bles? C’est quoi ca? Mushrooms are good and easy! Celery is my favourite vegetable, no joke. I try to pick foods that I can’t make a mess with…because like you, I WILL make a mess.