Wondering what Mommy Homework is??? Each week you will have an “assignment” here to share in our comments here on this site. You will love this-both sharing AND enjoying answers by others. Some of them, I compile into an ebook (contributors can resell as a product of their own–be sure to submit your email and full name when you register so I can credit you appropriately!).
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We get to know each other…we are encouraged in our journey…and we glean super ideas from other great moms!
Ready for this week’s MH? This is a good one!
Our topic this week is “Time for a PICNIC!”
Your Assignment This Week…
North Alabama is simply delightful today! It is soooo beautiful! In fact, I feel a picnic calling me! 🙂 How about you? Ready for a picnic?
This week, I would love to share picnic menus and ideas. There is something fun about sharing picnic favorites with a friend. AND…we can do it across the miles! 🙂 We will do it through Mommy Homework!
Share…
Your picnic menu (include any recipes for goodies that we may not know how to make)…
Your ideas for keeping things fresh, cold, hot….
Any musts that your crew MUST HAVE!
Have fun! This will be a fun cyber-picnic. I can’t wait! 
DIG IN!
Love ya!
Cindy…who is spreading the picnic blanket right now!
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Our favorite thing for a picnic is fruit kabobs. We use in season fruits, usually watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes, apples and whatever else we can get our hands on. We put them on the same skewers you would use to grill meat and veggies and trim off the point. After we have finished the meal the kids are then allowed to have all the “desert” they want and they feel so spoiled.
We love Picnics. The boys pick out a local park and we pack a quick lunch. My favorite easy lunch includes the following:
Veggie sticks with either peanut butter or cream cheese for a dip (less messy)
Wraps (flour tortilla, cream cheese, cheddar cheese, turkey and lettuce).
Chips (if the budget allows I will purchase chips , otherwise I make chips from tortillas or Italian break… cut and turned in to croûtons..)
For drinks I usually do bottles of water. If we are going to be gone for a long day I will partially freeze the water bottles and use them to keep lunch cold.
I have found with 2 very active boys picnics and hot food don’t work well for us. I use to pack a thermos for soup and sandwiches when my oldest was younger.
I love picnics! Thanks for such a fun topic this week Cindy!
My picnic blanket is a patchwork that I made with scraps from clothes my mother made for me when I was a kid. We also use old sheets when we need more room. These make our picnics very colorful.
When I was a kid we always used paper plates in those wicker basket holders to keep them from blowing away. Now we use reusable plastic plates, cups etc. that we found on sale.
There are lots of foods I like to make… not so many that my kids will eat. So most of our picnics consist of sandwiches, chips, dip, fruit and sodas or juice boxes. When I’m in the cooking mood I will make boneless, breaded chicken breasts for sandwiches. We also enjoy using tortillas to make wraps to change things up once in awhile.
Breaded Chicken Breast Sandwiches
flour, bread crumbs, your favorite seasoning
egg, milk
salt and pepper
boneless chicken breast cut in thin pieces or pounded thin
oil and/or butter for frying
your favorite bread and condiments for sandwiches
Mix the egg and milk in a bowl. In another bowl mix the flour, bread crumbs and seasoning. Dip the chicken pieces in the milk mixture, then in the bread crumbs. Make sure you coat each side. Then fry them in a little butter or oil (I use butter with olive oil for flavor) until golden brown and cooked through. Put them on paper towels to cool.
Assemble your sandwiches. I like to use wheat bread, mayo, and lettuce. These go well with honey mustard as well and you can add tomatoes, pickles or whatever you like. And if your little ones don’t want a sandwich they can just eat the chicken.
If I want a hot meal for the picnic, I wrap the chicken in paper towels, then in foil to keep them warm and assemble the sandwiches just before it’s time to eat.
BBQ Beef Wrap
(I think we got the idea for this from Pampered Chef)
Mix a little bbq sauce with cream cheese and spread it on a tortilla (I like whole wheat). Layer on thin sliced roast beef, grated cheddar cheese, lettuce or spinach and anything else you like (my dh likes chopped jalapenos on his). Then roll it up. I usually wrap it in a paper towel to hold it together and then put them all in a gallon size zip top bag.
You can also slice them about 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick and lay them on a tray if you’ll be sharing them with others.
I also have a tip for keeping salads cold at a picnic or potluck… this is great for seafood salad, potato salad, whatever. Make an ice bowl… you’ll need a large bowl and one slightly smaller that fits inside it. Put ice in the larger bowl, nest the smaller bowl inside it and add some water in with the ice until it’s full but not overflowing. Weight the smaller bowl (watch out for water spilling over at this point) with frozen veggies or something else from your freezer and put the whole thing in the freezer overnight. When it’s time to go just put the salad in the smaller bowl, cover it and put the whole thing in the cooler. The ice will take several hours to melt and you won’t have to worry about your salad going bad sitting out.
Happy Picnicking everyone!
Terri Lane
We love picnics – inside or out! For us it is not so much the menu, but where we go. Some days it is to a local park to sit by the river, or to a favorite spot where the kids love to play frisbee with Dad in the wide open spaces, but are able to watch the squirrels frisk at the same time. Sometimes it is packed in the van to go anywhere we end up while scouring lawn sales on the weekend. They even enjoy picnics in the livingroom on the floor!
Our menus have included the necessary items for a cookout if the location has grills. The basics are hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, some kind of dessert…always have to have dessert!
Other times it is simple pbj, chicken salad, salad fixings, or fruit salad….again, always with a dessert of brownies, cookies or homemade ice cream if we are home!
Now I am off to get our cookout together! Vicki
During the summer our family of five picnic at least once a week, but often more. Our cooler is always pre-stocked with plates, napkins and plastic-wear and we add freezer packs just before we leave the house. We always have a picnic blanket in the van and we almost always have the same thing to eat whenever we take a lunch anywhere and here it is…
PB&J Sandwiches
String Cheese
Go-Gurt
Some type of chips or crackers
Fruit
Baby Carrots
and our favorite “dessert” because they are protein packed, portable and filled with good for you ingredients-
Peanut Butter Balls-
Mix together in a large bowl
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup protein powder or nonfat dry milk
1/2 cup honey
a couple shakes of cinnamon
Then add and mix-
2 cups total of any combination of the following-
milled flax seed, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, peanuts, raisins, chocolate chips, coconut, wheat germ, oats, craisins, oat bran, cereal
Roll into small balls about 1 inch diameter and store in fridge or freezer. Yum!
I’ve only made them with the protein powder which already has some sweet flavor to it, so I don’t know if they would be as good with the dry milk. I make these about once a week to have on hand for a quick healthy snack.
Where we live, our picnic season always feels too short. Either it’s too chilly or too humid much of the time . . . so when the weather is perfect, we have to take advantage of it! 😉 At times when the weather is not so conducive to being outside, we have “picnics” in the living room . . . I even have an old cloth tablecloth that’s too small for our current dining room table that’s been dubbed “the picnic blanket” because we’ve used it for indoor picnics so often! 🙂
I tend to make pretty simple foods for picnics because my kiddos are little and are usually more interested in playing outside than eating the yummy treats in the cooler. Our family favorite for sandwiches is chicken salad — my secret ingredient is a good seasoned salt . . . only a little bit, but it makes the chicken salad just POP! Along with that, we usually go with lots of fruits and veggies, and maybe a little treat like chips (which we hardly ever have). Often we stop for ice cream on the way home, so that takes care of dessert! 🙂
Although I’ve not really considered them picnics, here is what we do (although I should start, because that’s what they are and it sounds more fun than “we’re going to bring our lunch instead of grab a bite).
I love to make wraps with the same fixings as a sandwhich but in a whole grain wrap. They are put into sandwich baggies for each person, marked with their name.
We usually purchase chips and either bag them, or buy ones already in little bags.
Capri Sun!! Yummy!
I usually try to pack a little dessert if we have it (brownies, cookie, etc.)
We have a nice big insulated bag that we use to keep everything cold. don’t forget the napkins.
Something we love to do is geocache while we are out. I think we are going to start letterboxing, too. Similar to geocaching but without the gps. We’ll either go to the local park/playground or sometimes we go to the nearest state park and swim or fish. We do a lot of camping, but these are parks we don’t camp at because they are so close, so it is a different setting as well.
Excited to read more ideas!
Christine Salinas – littlebitofeverythingmama
Something fun and extra special to make for a picnic are Crunchy Chicken Tenders with Apricot Dipping Sauce (found this recipe in Family Fun magazine). This serves 8 – 10, but is easy to cut in half for a smaller group:
2 lbs. chicken tenders, or breasts sliced into strips
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 Cup Dijon mustard
1/4 cup mayonnaise
6 cups cornflakes
SAUCE:
3/4 cup apricot preserve
3 Tablespoons mayonnaise
1 1/2 Tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 Tablespoon rice vinegar
Heat oven to 450. In a large bowl, toss chicken, salt, pepper, mustard, and mayonnaise.
To make coating, pulse the cornflakes in a blender about 10 times, or crush in a sealed plastic bag. Pour flakes into a large shallow bowl, and dredge the chicken through. Arrange the pieces on a rack over a baking sheet. Places pieces an inch or so apart.
Bake for 15 minutes or until the tenders are cooked through and crispy on the outside. Let them cool on the rack before packing to travel.
For the sauce, combine all the ingredients in a small bowl.
This is SO good and family hit :).
Kim Ehlers
This is great!! i’ll be watching intently because we usually stop at Subway, like today, and get $5 subs! it costs us around $22 which is NOT bad for our family. another idea if you dont’ have time or opportunity to make something is to pick up sandwiches at Albertsons, they have some really yummy crossaint mini sandwiches for a reasonable price for a whole lot of them. This is what comes to mind immediately, because we almost ALWAYS go picnic on the fly, and after church so we are not coming from home. However, our budget is tightening considerably, so we will need to start actually MAKING something!
Rebecca
Wow, I haven’t been on a picnic in a long time! I guess it’s time to start again.
If I were to go on one, I would love to sit on a blanket under a tree with a loaf of homemade bread, a chunk of cheese and fresh fruit. For drinks, I agree with Cariann – partially frozen water. I suppose if there were no children involved, we might splurge on a bottle of sparkling cider!
Heather (tgmama)
If I’m really worried about keeping things cool, then we do food that doesn’t have to be kept real cool ~ PB&J for sandwiches, chips, prepackaged fruit cups from the store.
However, we usually have several ice packs in the freezer that we can grab to keep things cool. So, we’ll add carrot sticks, grapes or apple slices, etc. to the mix.
Favorite salads for sandwiches are egg salad and chicken salad. Egg salad is usually just the diced hard-boiled eggs with some mayo and sweet relish. Chicken salad is usually the shredded or chunk chicken with mayo, chopped celery and chopped grapes. I keep them in containers on ice packs and the make the sandwiches when we’re ready to eat.
Another way to help keep things cold is to freeze your drinks (water, kool-aid, etc.) and put the food around them.
Dessert is sometimes just the yummy fruit, but other times I’ll throw in cookies or brownies.
Laura O’Neill, who thinks a picnic at the park sounds good once this heat wave breaks!
It is still too cold for picnics here in Alberta, but we tend to keep it simple. We live on an acreage, so we just head out with juice, crackers, sandwiches, fruit, cheese etc. for an outdoors snack. Another thing that is quick and easy for us to do is ‘roasts’ as my daughter calls them. We grab some weiners, head into the woods, Daddy builds a little fire, sharpens some sticks, peels some birch bark plates and we’re off. We get the BIG, juicy, cheesie smokies, bring some water bottles and rice crackers for the babies. After it dries up we’ll have to get some stones together for an official fire pit in the woods. We can’t do this often enough as far as the girls are concerned.
This is great timing. We visit my father-in-law every other weekend (he’s at a VA home recovering from a stroke) and picnic when the weather is nice. We typically fall back on sandwiches, veggies, chips & fruit. I also try to bake some sort of cookies, brownies or other easy to eat dessert. Our children love eating outdoors. Everything tastes special when eaten outside! There is a shelter house with picnic tables so even if it is raining, we are eating outside. Even though our menu doesn’t vary much, the children really enjoy it. DH & I look for more options besides the typical turkey & cheese sandwich though. Thank you for sharing!
Blessings!
Hillary in Indiana
We have a picnic basket that I keep packed and ready to go all summer long. If we use up something I just add it to my list of things to buy on my next trip to the store and we restock it for next time. This helps us to not feel overwhelmed by all the stuff we have to gather for our picnic and we mostly just have to gather the food.
We pack Menu #1 if it is a last minute picnic and I didn’t have time to make anything else. My teens and I usually pack menu #1 on a day we have errands or have an activity to go to so we can have a quick lunch. If the weather is good we go to a park and eat between errands if it not (winter or rain) we eat in the car. Menu #2 is usually when we plan a more relaxed picnic in one of our State Parks and go hiking or visit the Nature Preserve.
Menu #1
Sandwiches/ Wraps
Apples
Veggie sticks
Chips
Bottled water
Menu #2
Fried Chicken
Pasta Salad
Veggie Sticks
Fruit Salad
Baked Beans
Brownies
Iced Tea
Recipes we have used:
Hawaiian Salad
1 can mandarin oranges
1 can crushed pineapple
1 cup mini-marshmallows
1 small container of sour cream
Dump, stir, refrigerate.
Screwy Noodle Pasta Salad
1 12-oz. pkg. spirals
1 can olives, sliced or halved (save the juice)
¼ cup olive juice
1 cup Parmesan cheese
¼ cup oil
1 t. lemon juice
1 t sugar or 2 t. honey
1 T. vinegar
1 small carrot, grated
Fresh broccoli ~ a few florets chopped up
½ cup mayonnaise
[Optional: diced chicken]
1) Boil spirals, drain, cool with cold water.
2) Mix all ingredients from olive juice to mayo.
3) Add spirals, olives and chicken (if using.) Mix lightly so spirals aren’t crushed.
4) Add salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and Mrs. Dash to taste.
New Recipe:
This is a new one I want to try this year my husband is a fan of Buffalo Chicken so it should be good.
Buffalo Chicken Wraps
Prep Time: 10 min Total Time: 30 min makes: 4 servings, one wrap each
8 breaded chicken breast strips (about 3/4 lb.) or 14 breaded chicken nuggets
1/4 cup Mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. hot pepper sauce
2 cups shredded lettuce
4 flour tortillas (8 inch)
1 large tomato, chopped
1 cup Shredded Cheddar Cheese
Bake chicken as directed on package. Meanwhile, combine mayo and hot pepper sauce until well blended. Place lettuce evenly down centers of tortillas; top evenly with chicken, tomatoes and cheese. Drizzle with the mayo mixture. Fold in both sides of each tortilla to enclose filling.
We just moved to a property with 3 acres so we can picnic right in our back yard! Here’s a fruit salad that cools us off in a hurry.
1/2 C thawed frozen OJ concentrate
1 C lemon lime soda
Mix these two ingredients together. Slice a banana into this mix and stir well to coat the banana and keep it from browning.
Next add:
1 can pineapple chunks, drained (or fresh pineapple is even better)
1 can mandarin oranges, drained
2 C. strawberries, hulled and quartered.
Make this in advance and chill it well. If there’s any leftover, throw it in the blender for a smoothie right away or make popsicles.
Beth Bray
Mmmm – if my 3 year old knew I was talking about a picnic today, she’d be packing us up to go (even though it’s raining!)
Because we have little ones, we try to keep our picnics pretty simple: PB&J for the girls sometimes & sliced deli chicken breast on homemade sourdough bread with provolone cheese & mustard for mom & dad – carrot sticks and apple slices – ruffly potato chips – and ice cold bottled water (with the little drink mix packets of pink lemonade for us girls – daddy opts out). We’ll have popsicles or watermelon for dessert…
Many times – our picnic is out on our back patio with a blanket on the grass. The girls think it is the PERFECT picnic – and we enjoy being outside of the house together. I’m very inspired by this – and will have to make plans for our next sunny day!!!
We usually picnic at the beach, which we do not think is very good for a banquet.
But, you gotta have food of some sort. We like to picnic at the beach year round. We really love nature study at the beach, so go there year round.
For carrying our neccesities: I like a big ol’ bucket from Old Navy. It is big enough to get towels, sunscreen, extra clothes, blanket and more, more, more into. You know…. all that stuff I keep picking up and stuffing in on my way out the front door.
Our favorites – partially frozen water here too. And we always throw in an extra gallon in the trunk – we always run out. Iced tea, too.
Foods –
we like cheese and crackers, fresh fruit, fresh veggies – cut up and in zip locks. We make sandwiches (we never seem to have left overs no matter how many I make) or take hard boiled eggs.
I shop at this warehouse bargain store for snacky type stuff cheap – so will take whatever I happen to have that will work. Otherwise, we don’t usually have these type fast foods.
For picnic’s that we are having to go along with a field trip, I take a slightly different tactic. I will go to the store and pick up some things we don’t normally get – Dorito’s or something like that, a store bought type of cookie (Oreo’s, Little Debbies – ) and a big ol’ jug of some Hi-C type drink (we have individual drink things we carry along – that they finish their water and can use for drinks).
This is more like a treat time and I indulge in some of those yucky things that kids all over seem to love.
I still take fresh fruit – it is just one of those things we love to eat, especially when it is hot.
Our backyard is scenic and a great picnic area, so for us picnics are enjoyed often. The children love to take their lunch outside! One favorite picnic treat is potato candy!
Use a scoop of leftover mashed potatoes
Mix enough powdered sugar to form a thick spreadable consistency
Spread the potato mixtur onto waxed paper
Spread your favorite peanut butter on the mixture
Now Roll Up & Place in freezer!
When cool cut small chunks and serve!
This is a fun treat that can also spurn a short science lesson!
My kids ask to have a picnic lunch any nice day that there is. They actually call it a “tea party”. They set up a table on the deck and tell me to get the “party” ready. I usually just serve them up some kind of juice to drink and put together a plate full of potporri to eat. We usually cut up apples, grapes, crackers, cheese slices or cheese sticks, raisons, pepperoni slices. Really, I just look through the refrigerator and look for finger foods to give them. They like it all served on one plate to be able to pick and choose what they like. They absolutely love doing this any nice day, so I try to accomadate. It definitely makes our lunch time more enjoyable.
Our favorite picnic faire is Watermelon, Cold Oranges, and Applesall sliced with Grapes frozen and dipped in sugar.
A garden Salad along with finger sandwiches from cold chicken,roastbeef, or turkey.
Cold Ice Tea, with Orange slices on top are a naturally flavored ice tea. This is actually called Sunshine Tea – Hot freshly made tea has orange slices placed in it the flavor seeps into the tea.
We have a state park less than 5 minutes from the house. So we get to have picnics once in a while.
Lisa Robinson