“Picnics,” by Robin Vitetta-Miller (Potter, 2005, $14.95), is a slim, well-focused, brightly illustrated 96 pages. Its “easy recipes for the best al fresco foods” cover finger foods and starters, salads and sandwiches, dips and spreads, and desserts, to combine in menus of your choice.
Vitetta-Miller’s introduction is especially helpful, with details of safe food handling – as are all her recipes, with careful instructions for making each dish that include how to pack it. At the end of the book she suggests some theme-party menus and how to create the ambiance for, say, an elegant soiree or a Mexican fiesta.
“I picnic five days a week and at weekends too,” she said in a phone interview from her home in Scottsdale, Ariz. “With my two boys, a 3-year-old and a 20-month-old, I do a lot of grab and go. Right now, I’d get cheese and fruit, some crackers. I have a pasta salad. Perhaps some tortillas and we’d do wraps with turkey. The kids and I make our food on the run – and we go.”
No wonder one of the baby’s first words was “picnic.”
This is her list of “extras worth remembering”:
A bottle opener (for corks and bottle tops).
Paper towels.
Bug spray.
Trash bags.
Antibacterial wipes.
Water.
– Joan Brunskill, The Associated Press
