Our family loves picnics. Eating outside with friends is great, and not cooking in the summer heat is amazing, too. We’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple months picnicking with friends at local parks, each other’s houses, and poolside. Prepping for picnic season is easy; I put the picnic blanket in the back of the car and restock the cooler backpack with essentials – napkins, grocery bags for gathering trash, and kid scissors for opening popsicles.
Our whole family loves finger foods, so for the most part, we just put together a bunch of snacking foods and call it good. Occasionally we’ll grab pizza or fried chicken to take on a picnic, but it’s pretty rare. I have a couple lidded trays that fit in the cooler and try to load one with veggies and the other with fruit. We try to eat mostly whole foods, and this is my list to reference when I’m drawing a blank on what to pack.
Fruits – grapes, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, clementines, oranges, watermelon slices, bananas, apple slices, whole apples, plums, pears
Vegetables – carrot sticks, cucumber slices, cherry tomatoes, radishes, sugar snap peas, sliced bell peppers, mini pickles, pickle spears, black olives, green olives
Dips – ranch dip, onion dip, hummus, salsa, bean dip
Breads – mini naan, saltines, ritz crackers, wheat thins, pretzel chips, pita chips, tortilla chips
Proteins – rolled up deli meat, sliced kielbasa sausage, pepperoni/salami slices, meat sticks, jerky, hard-boiled eggs, cashews, pecans, honey roasted peanuts, cheese sticks, cheese slices, spreadable cheese, yogurt tubes
Make-Aheads – quesadillas, PB&Js, pinwheels/tortilla & meat roll upsBreakfast – egg burritos, donuts, bagels & cream cheese, muffins
Desserts – popsicles, ice cream cones, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, rice krispie treats
Disclaimer/Reality Check: Our picnics are simple and usually only have a handful of things at once, not a huge spread as listed. Keep it simple, enjoy the company of friends and family outside; you can have a great picnic without staging it for pictures. This column will be about motherhood, parenting, and homemaking for the most part. Sometimes it’ll be a funny parenting poem and other times it’ll be lamentations on the passage of childhood. Most importantly, I don’t ever want this column to make another mama think she’s not doing enough. If you’re reading this, I want you to know that you are, you’re doing great, keep it up. Sing it with me: no-one is doing it allllll!
