OK.
The warm weather and the sunshine are just more obvious hints that we are in summer and nearing the official start of this glorious season. Other more subtle hints are an abundance of sidewalk chalk art, the chirp of crickets, fresh strawberries waiting to be picked and people populating their porches.
Today, 18 June is National Picnic Day. The picnic as we know it today evolved from the more elegant moveable outdoor feasts enjoyed by society’s wealthy in previous centuries. Whether it’s a blanket and a hot dog in the park or a packed basket at the beach, picnics are for everyone and remain a delight.
My family has a rich picnic tradition. As a small child, I remember my mother filling a thermos with chocolate milk, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tossing in two apples placing it all in a brown bag and encouraging my sister to take her baby sister down the path to the pinewoods to share a picnic lunch.
My father loved to eat outdoors. He made a most impressive, large and weighty wooden picnic table, varnished it, set it up perfectly level and from around late May through late September the family ate dinner every day outside on the picnic table. My father even packed the back-pack, gathered the clan and we walked into the October woods on many a Sunday afternoon for a cook-out.
As previously noted in this blog, my mother was an amazing cook and she even excelled at exercising her culinary artistry cooking outside over a campfire. I'm talking a major meal of roast and potatoes and not just weenies on a stick.
On this National Picnic Day, celebrate a meal outside! Pack a lunch and eat it in the park or fire-up the charcoal and plan to grill dinner. In this season try and have at least one meal outside each day --- be it coffee and a donut on the front porch or a sandwich near the river or take-out in the park.
Get out!
sj;