Hi,
the very warm weather has started here in Croatia. And with it the urge to go somewhere nice and cool. It’s perfect time to go to picnic before it gets too hot. So let’s plan a picnic.
Pick a picnic location
This is the most crucial step. It will decide what you will bring, and how (will you go by car, bike, horse …). We will go this year to the bank of river Drava. It’s 10 minutes bike ride from our house, and is accessible by car. Since it’s a river bank forest, the soil there is wet, and thus we won’t use the picnic blanket. There are specially made picnic and barbecue areas and we’ll use one of them. It consists of wooden tables with benches and a fire pit. So if we want we can make a barbecue.
Questions to ask
- Where are we going?
- How can we access it?
- Is that area wet or dry?
- Are there any mosquitoes?
By answering these location questions you can make first preparations. In our case the answers are – river Drava Forest, anyway we want to, it’s wet, and yes there are mosquitoes. So picnic blanket off, bring mosquito repellent, take the car.
Picnic food & drink
The next big question – what are we going to eat? Picnic foods should be easy to take along, and most of the prepared. If your location has a fire pit you can take sausages and meat and make a barbecue, it depends on what you want to do on your day in the nature. Usual food for picnic are sandwiches. They are make ahead and easy to transport. Also popular are salads in jars – easy to pack and carry. And of course you’d like a dessert at the end of your meal, so take something that is not going to melt. Ice cream is not a good idea. The best foods for picnic are those that taste great even when cold or luke warm.
Questions to ask
- Does my location have a fire pit?
- Do I want to bother with barbecue or would I prefer to take everything from home?
- Can we transport a lot of food or only the essentials?
- Are we going to use cutlery?
- Do we have access to fresh drinking water or we have to pack all our beverages?
- Fruit or dessert or both?
So, let’s answer this set of questions: yes, it has fire pit, but no, i don’t want to be bothered with barbecue. We can transfer a lot of food if we go by car. Maybe we’ll use spoon for dessert and fork for salad, but would like to keep cutlery to minimum. No, we need to take everything with us when it comes to drinks. Both – watermelon and cherry small pies (with homemade cherry filling).
Since we want to keep cutlery to minimum, we’ll carry foods that are easy to pack – sandwiches, salads, fruit and dessert that you can eat from hand. We won’t be making barbecue. I don’t want to stress about finding enough wood or carrying enough wood to make the barbecue.
As for the drinks, we have big 5L glass containers that we’ll most likely fill with juice. We’ll also bring some plastic glasses. I’m a bit clumsy and we have very nice glasses I don’t want to break.
Entertainment
Picnic doesn’t have to be only eating. We can do some fun stuff as well. You can carry a ball or badminton rackets if there’s a meadow near by, or you’re going to a park. No one said that you can’t play cards while on picnic as well. Choose something that you know will be a hit with all.
Questions to ask
- Will we bring some games?
- Would we like some recreation?
- Can we bring a radio or an instrument with us?
And with these last questions we have finished with our picnic preparation list. Unfortunately, for me the answer to all of the last questions are “No” so no entertainment this first time. I plan to have few more picnics this year, that will include more friends, and for those ones we’ll take a at least a radio with us.
Hopefully these questions will help you plan your own picnic a bit easier. They helped me a lot.
Happy picnicing! 😉