Drizzle.
With an unrelenting autumn rain in the background, I give you picnic pictures from Summer's Last Hurrah. A friend of ours gave us the coolest picnic basket, complete with tablecloth, candles, and tableware (clothware?) for our wedding four years ago. This is the first time we've used it because our picnics are usually spontaneous or secretive (i.e. John packs a picnic in his backpack and surprises us). Using a cool picnic basket makes a picnic more picnic-y, the bugs less buggy, and the food more feastlike, and I'll not return to pre-basket picnics (unless they're spontaneous and secretive).
My midwife appointment on Friday would have been dull but for the sound of our baby's steady life rhythm. I'm an occasional overachiever and found that I've got a good chance to win the title of World's Largest Pregnant Girl (With Only One Baby Inside). I'd like to take this moment to thank last week's picnic, with its fried chicken, Italian bread and butter, tomato bruschetta, homemade dill pickles, cherry tomatoes + cucumbers, apples + sharp cheddar, deviled eggs, fizzy punch, and chocolate chip cookies. I couldn't have done this without you, and you've been there every step of the way....
I've decided to begin a regular practice (which will earn the title of "tradition" once a few years have passed) of Seasonal Picnics. We will have at least one outdoor picnic for each season, with season-appropriate garb and feasting. Autumn is next, spiced cider and pumpkin-infused. (I look forward to hot cocoa and gingerbread cookies in winter.) The baby will be here in time for our squelchy spring picnic. One last hurrah!
(Um. Has anyone noticed a recurring theme since my morning sickness has passed?)
13 comments :
And how were the dill pickles? Did the compare to the remembered pickles of youth?
oh my.....that sounds (and looks) so delicious! Wow!
They not only compared, but they surpassed! I was going to (and probably still will) rave about them in my next email to you. Munch-crunchy and sizzling with flavor (sizzle due in part perhaps to an overzealous helper and some added ingredients). Thanks a million! I'm going to share the recipe with my mom.
Did you make that fried chicken in the photo yourself?
Or was a good portion of this picnic straight from "the store"
FROM THE STORE?!?!?! GASP!
I made the fried chicken coating and fried it myself, of course! (I did not make the dead chicken.)
We live in town, have no chickens, and so purchased the eggs, though I made them into little devils. And I wouldn't want to imply that the veggies were homemade; God took care of that for us. The ingredients for the cookies were purchased (though they wouldn't have been cookies if I hadn't mixed the right things together). How is baking powder made and of what? (I'll have to look into that one...)
This is getting confusing. We don't grow wheat or have cows, so the flour and butter and cheese were purchased. The fizzy punch is a conglomeration of store-bought items. Even the homemade pickles have mustard seeds, peppercorns, salt, vinegar, and etc., etc., from the store!
So, here's the short answer. This was a homemade foodstuffs picnic, but, even so, a goodly portion of the ingredients are straight from the store. Sigh, so much for homemade.
Well, my question was heading toward this:
What kind of batter did you use for your fried chicken? It looks good, and I might want to try (or get Titi to try) and make some fried chicken sometime soon.
After all, in mid Octobar we have another batch of chickens to butcher and we'll have a lot of chicken wings . . .
I was going to say (before he sort of beat me to it), that the only reason he was asking is that the poor boy has never had any HOME fried chicken. Now that you have made it painfully obvious that it's possible, I'll probably be called upon to prove it, shortly.
While were speaking of cooking things in boiling oil, some day I simply have to make homemade dougnuts.
Rundy + Titi- Two:
I took your question a little too literally, huh? It's true, though. Most everything came from the store when one goes to the beginning. (Even the tomatoes we harvested from our garden were plucked from plants we purchased. Goodness me.)
I'll let you know when I've posted the recipe for the fried chicken on buildabelly (fill 'er hup!), most likely tomorrow. It'll probably be a little vague, as I threw in some of this and a little of that, but I'll try to remember what the this and that were. A few times of tweaking it to your own tastes, and you'll have some savory, fried chicken to boast about to the ends of the earth.
oh, doughnuts. they're my downfall when i'm pregnant. send some my way.
Abby,
We need a picture of the World's Largest Pregnant Girl (With Only One Baby Inside)!!! ;)
Your picnic sounds like it was wonderful!
Huh. They want to know about the fried chicken. I'd like to know the recipe for the tomato bruschetta, unless it came from the st--uh, you-know-where. Do you have Wegmans in Buffalo? If I was having a picnic, I'd want to make a stop at the olive bar at Wegmans (which has more than olives, but more kinds of olives in one place than I've ever seen before) before heading out.
Leah,
Must I? :) Full-belly pictures of me are rare on this blog because my arms don't stretch far enough, and John's not exactly a camera lover. (I suppose I'll have to break down and use the timer...)
Prepare to be astounded! (My belly's big, though not yet eclipsing the moon, but my double chin has already returned. Huzzah!)
Kathy,
I wasn't completely bowled over by the version of tomato bruschetta that I made, but I'm going to try to get a recipe from my aunt that did bowl me over when I had it. If that fails, I plan to try a few more recipes that I've got, and I'll let you know when I've found (and posted) The One.
oh, yeah! we love wegmans, but we don't do much shopping there because their pleasing array tempts money out of wallets too easily. :)
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