Picnics!

This summer we've been going on lots of picnics!  They are a bit ore work, but we love them :)  We even packed up a little picnic in the backyard a few days ago...Mexican pizza wasn't the best idea for a picnic, but you live you learn, right?  One of our early picnics this year was with our cousin Amy who was in Hershey for a short 10 weeks.  Here is what we had... 

...a homegrown salad with nasturtiums and boiled eggs hanging out in a pot of bunny tails.  The nasturtium flowers and leaves were a little bitter for my taste, as were the lettuce leaves.  I think I need to be a bit more vicious early in spring when they are babies and make salads then.  Pretty though!

(A note on the bunny tails...they grew very easily and were beautiful until it got hot.  They dried up a bit and got straggly, but if they were in the ground they might have performed better?  Next year I think we'll try them in the ground instead of the pot...the kids liked them!)

Here was our main dish...a chilled grilled fish (sounds like a Dr. Suess book!) on top of a tortellini salad.  It was dressed simply with olive oil, lemon juice and herbs.  the main herb was my favorite, dill, and sadly I have run out of it.  For awhile, we were putting dill on everything...fish, pasta, potato salad, etc etc etc.  ...and then the little spice bottle ran out and I thought it would be easy to replace it.  Wrong!  The only dill I can find is a tiny jar in the grocery store for $5!  So next year, dill is definitely on the list of herbs to grow and dry.  Maybe we'll even try it inside this winter in a pot?

Speaking of next year...I'm thinking asparagus, strawberries (they are in the ground now...crossing my fingers they overwinter), LOTS of tomatoes, pumpkins and watermelons along with a new bush of lemon balm and St. John's Wort for rice packs....and DILL!

This was actually a leftover from another picnic meal that I brought along.  It was a spicy peanut noodle dish from scratch.  The noodles were udon noodles I had leftover and needed to use up.  We thought it was quite yummy!   Recently I tried a "Taste of Thai" Peanut sauce ix with rice noodles to make a similar dish.  I was trying to make a family sized version of this:

well...Smart ones is better...MUCH better.  The rice noodles were gummy (due to my inexperience) and the mix was tasteless and kind of gross.  I definitely don't recommend it, but I DO heartily recommend the smart one Thai noodles meal...YUMMY!

Finally, we had blue corn chips with this homemade relish.  I had some fresh chives and mint to use, so I mixed it with sour cream, corn, some paprika, chopped poblanos and hot pepper seeds.  Reminiscent of chipotle's corn salsa, but not nearly as good :) 

What is your favorite picnic dish?  Any experiments that failed?  Anything that really worked well?  I am looking for a guest blogger to do a picnic post...let me know if you are game!!

More picnics to come...stay tuned!

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