Simple picnic food for an outdoor appetite
If you go down to the woods today
Picnic food should not be too complicated and much of it can be made in a few minutes from what you have in your fridge and/or larder. |
Normally you would have enough ingredients in the house to make some kind of wrap or a good old fashioned sandwich. Rolls or filled bagels are another easy picnic food idea.
As supplies go, salads are great for the keep-it-simple philosophy too. A salad or two, some good bread and you have the basis of a lovely outdoor meal.
The best salads for travelling are those which can be mixed or tossed before you leave home. This Italian salad is one of those and so is, what in my opinion is the ultimate picnic salad.
There are plenty of other tasty salad recipes for picnics in the Picnic Site, some of which can be used to make a meal, others as part of an outdoor feast.
You'll also find salad recipes here with beetroot as the main ingredient. Or there again, if you want red, perhaps you prefer to stick to the tomato.
One thing that should always be high on your list when choosing a salad is to make it from
healthy salad ingredients,
and you'll pick up some great ways of doing this at Nature's Health Foods.
Apart from salads, you can include such things as sausage rolls,
picnic ham
(USA or UK version),
chicken,
gorgeous hand-made
scotch eggs,
or big wedges of
tortilla,
or savoury
pasties
or pies. If it’s an informal picnic, it shouldn’t be too dainty or refined!
Small vegetables such as baby carrots, baby courgettes, strips of red, yellow and green pepper, asparagus tips, celery sticks, radishes, cherry tomatoes etc. all add a bit of crunch, which I think is necessary. You can display them around a
healthy dip or two.
As far as possible you want picnic food that you don’t need cutlery for – at least no more than a fork. And if you have to have meat that requires a proper knife and fork (for
barbecue recipes
for example) then make sure you have proper plates and not flimsy paper ones which buckle up in your lap!
Then also in the picnic hamper should be something sweet, such as coffee cake with walnuts, some variety of picnic cake, fruitcake or oaty flapjacks to satisfy healthy outdoor appetites.
And don’t forget the drinks and not just the alcoholic ones! Have lots of soft drinks and water available too, especially for children, who dehydrate quickly when they're playing in the sunshine. For ideas go to picnic drinks.
