Picnic food ideas

[Yeps]

My Dad (1924-2008) used the "jam sandwich" saying all time. Until your quoting of your Grandmother, I'd never heard it used by anyone else. My Dad also used the term "pine float" which, according to him, was "a tooth pick in a glass of water."

I have not heard that one before. I will ask my dad to see if he heard it growing up. I like it though, and might start using it.

 

[Oldsarge]

I have to ask, what is the background of the person you are portraying? My mom still had her Victory Garden cookbook and reading it, I get the impression that VG's were a very big deal and quite beneficial to the civilian population. And then there was all the hunting and fishing that went on. Anyone who lived near water was almost duty bound to go fishing and either can or smoke the excess catch. Rabbits are easy to grow in a backyard and can subsist on lawn clippings augmented with vegetable trimmings. So if your character is either country/small town or suburban, there really isn't much of a limitation on what you can bring. Of course, if your character lived in a walk-up flat in the city, it's a different world.

 

[DavidJones]

Well my favorite picnic foods, of a vintage style, was from the Hitchcock movie "To Catch a Thief"
If I remember right it was a picnic basket of Fried Chicken, Boiled eggs and bottled beer.
Bet there was a jar of pickles and a loaf of crusty bread also.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Here's a description of a vintage picnic in Frank Norris's McTeague (1899).

The lunch was delicious. Trina and her mother made a clam chowder that melted in one's mouth. The lunch baskets were emptied. The party was fully two hours eating. There were huge loaves of rye bread full of grains of chickweed. There were wienerwurst and frankfurter sausages. There was unsalted butter. There were pretzels. There was a cold underdone chicken, which one ate in slices, plastered with a wonderful kind of mustard that did not sting. There were dried apples, that gave Mr. Sieppe the hiccoughs. There were a dozen bottles of beer, and, last of all, a crowning achievement, a marvelous Gotha truffle.

 

[kiwilrdg]

I will be going for the fried chicken (garden hens from the victory garden) and pickled eggs
I will have some home-canned items like apple butter and apple sauce
a bean salad
and eggless, oil-less cake with homemade fig jam

I also hope to pick up some fresh tomatos etc. at a farmers market.

 

[lolly_loisides]

^^^^^^
Sounds like a nice picnic spread kiwirdg. You need a few fish paste sandwiches though

 

[kiwilrdg]

Fish paste would be good for my Kiwi interpretations but for this one the museum is the National Museum of America at War so I am doing a yank interpretation.

 

[Oldsarge]

I will be going for the fried chicken (garden hens from the victory garden) and pickled eggs
I will have some home-canned items like apple butter and apple sauce
a bean salad
and eggless, oil-less cake with homemade fig jam

I also hope to pick up some fresh tomatos etc. at a farmers market.

Yes, that's my idea of a picnic! You might throw in some home-made bread, too. Just sayin' . . .

 

[kiwilrdg]

You might throw in some home-made bread, too. Just sayin'

Plates, cups, salt, pepper, homemade bread. Some things do not even need to be listed.

The only real extravagent items are the eggs, but if there is enough v-garden birds to cook one there would be eggs, and it is better to cook local food than to buy something that needs to be shipped.

 

[31 Model A]

1. Fried chicken
2. Bologna sandwiches
3. Spud salad
4. Mac salad
5. Apples
6. Pie/cake
7. coffee/ice tea

Never all of the above at once but everything was homemade, for sure.