Go on a Picnic

About three weeks ago summer finally arrived in Boston. Before it got the idea that it should move right along to fall I needed to attend to no. 11 on my list of 32 Things: Go on a picnic.

To go on a picnic you need food, good food, lots of good food! And of course, you need some fabulous company. Our fabulous company came in the form of our friends Val & Jim and a sea of strangers who had also staked out a little piece of Boston Common to watch Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.

Val and I split up the food making with me taking sandwiches and dessert while she took sides and a beverage. I couldn’t decide on just one sandwich recipe so I made two: prosciutto and brie sandwiches with rosemary fig confit and roast beef sandwiches with lemon-basil mayonnaise and roasted red onions. They went perfectly with Val’s tomato-cantaloupe salad and red potato-two bean salad topped with herbs fresh from her garden. To wash it all down, Val brought a sparkling lemonade that may have gotten its sparkle from champagne. After all that yumminess, we had just enough room left in our bellies to fit in my dessert, blueberry crumb bars.

It was a perfect summer night. The air was the perfect temperature, the play was fantastically done, the company great, and the food was out of this world. It was with a happy sigh that I crossed the picnic off my list.