Eating With Bugs

When it comes right down to it, I’m not sure why people like picnics. While you have the opportunity to eat your food at a clean and dry kitchen table without getting bitten by mosquitoes, you choose instead to eat at a very dirty table surrounded by bugs and other of God’s not-so-stellar ideas (though I’m sure they are all part of his plan and he didn’t ask me), eating with and on plastic.

Having said that, I will tell you that I love picnics. Always have. Always will.

My mom was a good picnicker. Several times in the summer she would pack up a basket or box of picnic standbys -- fried chicken, cole slaw, deviled eggs, and her Three-Day-Dill pickles – and schlep it all out to Pawnee Park, along with the rest of us. She would lay a tablecloth on the picnic table and set out the picnic. My brother and sisters and I would play on the playground toys for a bit and then join her and my dad for our picnic dinner.

My husband and I picnicked our way through France a few years ago. We speak no French, and since the language is not intuitive to me (what with all them thar silent letters), and the French people have little-to-no interest in helping out, ordering food in a restaurant was a bit intimidating. Picnics were the answer. We could sign language our way in the grocery markets to getting a baguette, some pate, some olives, a hunk of smelly cheese, and some wine. Many a meal was spent at a table along the side of a road (ideally underneath one of the really beautiful crucifixes many French grape growers had at the corner of their vineyards) or even just on the bed of our hotel room.

I’m happy to say that my love for picnicking has been passed on to my grandkids, all of whom love to take food out to the nearest park and eat. They agree with me that, despite the bugs, everything tastes better outdoors.

Here is my mom’s cole slaw recipe.