We have had just enough warm weather this month to get us acclimated to the notion of summer, and now it is about to get cooler, but in a zesty, spring-y fashion. (We can wear cotton sweaters – and we won’t have to break out our heavy Icelandic wools.) We know that hot weather will be oppressing us soon enough, but we are still giddy at the prospect of being outside again, getting rosy cheeks and feeling the wind in our hair. Wearing jackets again for a week isn’t too great a set back. By golly, it’s almost picnic weather! It’s almost time to plan going to the beach! Take me out to the ball game!
In a couple of weeks I will be meeting up with some old college chums. We know from experience that it takes too much time to herd us all into a car, agree upon a restaurant, and then drive off to it. It is easier to plan a few meals ahead of time, and have elements of them packed away tidily in orderly Tupperware stacks in the fridge, alongside the beer, cheap white wine and packages of Berger cookies. A certain amount of salad will be necessary to counteract our predictable, massive consumption of Doritos, and the onslaught of Utz sour cream and onion potato chips. We know how to wield our expensive liberal arts degrees for the greater good; the survival of the vaguely fit. We will eat our vegetables.
As a group we will traipse down a small hill, laughing, across the grassy lawn, to a wood picnic table on a floating dock on the glossy Chester River for some of our evening picnic meals. Everyone will carry a dish, or a container, a tablecloth and the wine bottles, down to the dock, where we can sit and watch the birds come home from work, just before sunset. There will be cocktails. And laughter.
These veggie delights are easily prepared, fresh and delicious, loaded with nutrients and anti-oxidants. We will merrily enjoy waterside al fresco interludes before we get down to the evening business of frying up crab cakes and talking. Another night will require steamed crabs. Last night lobsters? Sure thing! And once we have laid waste to the food supplies, like so many locust, we will depart. A good time will be had by all.
For your own picnic season, consider the following:
Go for some fresh, sweet peas, radishes and mint leaves – pink and green for springtime!
Pea Salad with Radishes
Berry Salad – good for breakfast, lunch or dinner, or at midnight when you just can’t sleep yet
Here is a chickpea salad that gets more deelish in the fridge. Perfect to take down to the dock, and easy to make ahead: Chickpea Salad
We should have this on our first night, since we don’t know when everyone will be getting in, and then no one needs to hover over a stove, missing out on our endless hilarious recollections: Avocado Chicken Salad
Add a dash of giggles, some wine, and be thankful that we outgrew our impecunious penchants for Old Milwaukee and Gallo French Columbard.
Pizza was vital in college. We certainly haven’t outgrown it, thank goodness, but we don’t live on it anymore. Maybe a sophisticated spinach salad with mozzarella and pepperoni will scratch that Memory Lane itch:
Pizza Salad
Martha always has the answer. Here is her daughter’s chopped salad recipe that she enjoys feeding to her children. We will have regressed to giddy young things, so it is entirely perfect: Alexis’s Chopped Salad
TikTok Summer Salads are very trendy! No one sends me free samples of Chili Crunch, but I did spend a lot on the same jar of Momofuko Chili Crunch in a chichi wine shop last week. It is overpriced, but not over-hyped.
TikTok Pepper Salad
Next week Food Friday will be a repeat of a previous cooking experience while I am off searching for my lost youth. Enjoy the beginning of picnic season, and lacrosse season, and baseball, and going to the beach. Keep some Tupperware salads handy in case of adventure!
“Never plan a picnic’ Father said. ‘Plan a dinner, yes, or a house, or a budget, or an appointment with the dentist, but never, never plan a picnic.”
― Elizabeth Enright
