Picnics

Eating good food in the open air, in beautiful surroundings, is obviously an enormously attractive idea -- but this is only the first of half a dozen reasons why we favour picnics, even if we have to eat them in an hotel room (or, preferably, on the balcony).

Castle of Loarre, Navarre.

Much of rural Europe is dissected with farm roads that are entirely accessible even to ordinary cars (obviously still more so to our 1972 Land Rover, as seen in the last picture, below), though some hire car companies specifically forbid driving on unsurfaced roads. Go far enough south -- this is northern Spain -- and the winter is short indeed. You can usually have a picnic as late as October, maybe even November if you are lucky and there is no wind, though you may need to wear a jacket. Then it is often warm enough again by March; see Out of Season

Take care, obviously, not to damage crops, alarm or release animals, or block gates; but most continental European farmers are very laid-back about picnickers who aren't either in their way or causing damage.

The second and most obvious of the reasons for having a picnic is that you are not dependent on finding a restaurant, or on unfamiliar restaurant timings. The extremes for this, in our experience, are rural Pennsylvania, and much of Spain. In the former, we found restaurants that stopped serving dinner at 19:00 (7 pm), while in the latter there are places that do not open for dinner until 21:30 (9:30 pm). If you are trying to synchronize eating and finding an hotel, this can be even worse. With a picnic, you don't have to stop at an hotel before the restaurants close, or find a hotel after eating: you can stop and eat whenever you want.

The third is that it may be difficult or impossible to find (or get into) a restaurant, or alternatively, to find (or get into) a restaurant at the sort of price you want to pay. 'Get into' because, for example, there may be a local fiesta that fills the resrtaurants: this happened to us in the Spanish Pyrenees. Or for that matter, it is quite common in France for restaurants to close one night a week, and astonishingly, both restaurants in one village (if there are two) may close on the same day.

The fourth is that in most countries you can get a bottle of wine with your picnic. If, like us, you believe that a day without wine is like a day without sunshine, a 'restaurant' that does not serve wine or beer can be something of a trial. Again, the United States can be very bad for this: the legacy of Prohibition lives, and there are plenty of places that are 'dry' or where you have to join a private club (sometimes 24 hours in advance) before you can have wine or beer with your meal.

The fifth, closely related to the above, is that even if we can get a meal with wine, we prefer to walk back to the hotel, guest-house or whatever, rather than driving back. If there is no restaurant within walking distance, we sometimes prefer a picnic to a wine-free meal.

The sixth is that you may not care for the local food. Again, we have had this problem in the more obscure reaches of the United States, where it's a choice of hamburgers, fried chicken, or if you're lucky, fried catfish or barbecued ribs. We would rather go hungry than eat any of these, except really good barbecued ribs; not the sort that are apparently boiled after being covered in a slippery, artificial-smoke-flavoured barbecue sauce. And in Transylvania, there's always mamaliga (cornmeal mush). Once again, the picnic looks uncommonly attractive.

Still life with bottle

This really ought to be a part of the rogerandfrances.com 1000 Motels gallery.

These six arguments mean that we have two kinds of picnic, the 'classical' variety (where we eat outdoors for the fun of it) and the other kind where we eat a picnic for the other reasons. In what follows, we assume you are travelling by car, whether your own or hired. If you are walking, or travelling by motorcycle, fresh-food picnics in the open air are likely to be the only realistic option, with the food being eaten within a few minutes, at most an hour, of being bought. Otherwise it's just too much hassle to carry. We don't mind a back pack full of food, even on the motorcycle, for a short while; but in the longer run, it is wearing to carry and can be dangerous if you fall off the motorcycle.

What to buy

The trick lies in not having too rigid a definition of a picnic, and in not trying to economize too much on what you pay. A picnic can actually cost more than a cheap meal, but against that, it is often better for you and better tasting. On the other hand, it is easy to get carried away, and to buy more food than you really want, which won't keep if you fail to finish it. As a result, you either stuff yourself or throw away perfectly good food, or sometimes both.

Think in terms, therefore, of Spanish-style tapas, a number of little dishes, eaten at room temperature, rather than a conventional meal. Think of cans and bottles. Such things are often much easier to find in shops specializing in (or at least selling) Mediterranean foods, especially Spanish, Greek and Turkish -- though the Poles and the Germans offer a surprising variety too. There are enormous national variations in the availability of such things, and very wide variations too between supermarket chains, but a shop that sells one kind of 'ethnic' food is surprisingly likely to sell another. In the UK, we buy a lot of Turkish food in the Bristol Sweet Mart, which specializes primarily in Indian and Pakistani food.

It's easiest to begin with the sort of long-keeping food (often bottled or canned) that is ideal for the 'other reasons' picnics, the ones that are not necessarily eaten in beautiful surroundings. If you buy the right food, it will be even more delicious on a sunlit hillside in the middle of nowhere than in a hotel room on a winter's evening. If your picnic basket is well stocked with canned delicacies, you can survive (possibly quite well) if you can't find a few fresh vegetables to eat raw, such as sweet peppers, tomatoes or a cucumber; and if you have some form of savoury biscuit, the need for fresh bread is much reduced. Crisps (potato chips) and corn chips are another good replacement for fresh bread and will last for quite a while: they are in more danger of getting squashed than of going stale.

Canned and bottled food

Let's begin with the protein. Typically we will begin a picnic with some canned nuts, usually salted: normally, either almonds or cashews. Then we go on to the main course. We are especially fond of various kinds of canned seafood, which we lump together generically as 'cat food'. This includes things like canned shrimps or crab, or small fish such as sardines if you like them, but we are especially fond of canned octopus and squid (calamares), which come in an astonishing variety. When we can find them, we stock up on peppers stuffed with various kinds of fish and even (on one memorable occasion) stuffed with quail. Interestingly, and despite the memorable beans sequence in Blazing Saddles, canned sardines and other fish were apparently one of the great staples of cowboy cuisine in the Old West. We eat relatively little canned meat such as ham and luncheon meat, but this is another option.

Along with the protein, we like vegetables too. Flame-grilled peppers, bottled or canned, are a staple. So is canned or bottled asparagus. Frances is fond of canned corn or canned green beans (both surprisingly good cold) while Roger prefers canned olives. Big, canned Greek white beans (gigantes) are good, too, and so are stuffed vine leaves (dolmades/dolmathakia). We rarely eat canned fruit, though: wherever possible, we'd rather have something fresh. We do however carry sweet biscuits (cookies) sometimes, to eat with tea, milk or wine.

This brings us to another point. It is far better to share (say) five small cans, with plenty of variety, than to buy a big, family-sized can. It looks expensive. In one sense, it is expensive. But we rarely spend more than 20 euros ($28, £14) on a picnic, including the wine, and sometimes we get away with as little as half that. This is for two people, remember.

Vegetable shop, Greece

If you can't speak the language, and can't even read the labels, you will have to rely on self-service supermarkets or (like this) places where you can simply point, raise one finger (not your thumb -- that's very rude in Greece) and say 'kilo'. Alternatively, write the number on a scrap of paper: 100 is 100 whether you are speaking Spanish, Greek or Hungarian, though in Greece you had better learn to write a gamma (for grammes; it looks like a little gallows or upside-down L with the cross-piece to the right). Then, 300g is easy to get across. But some people will need to learn the metric system too. Roughly, 100g is 3.5 oz and 500g is 18 oz.

Fresh food

We have already mentioned bread, salad materials and fruit, though we didn't include avocadoes among the fruit, and they are delicious. There are however several other possibilities.

A hard dried-meat sausage or saucisson sec -- the sort you see being eaten by weary soldiers on both sides in World War Two movies -- will last for days or weeks at room temperature. In fact it will keep better in the picnic basket than in a cooler. Frances made a muslin tube to store sausages in: we call it the wurst case. Cut from one end; throw away the last 3mm/eighth of an inch, if it's dried out; and you need astonishingly little of the stuff before you feel as though, in the teeth of the evidence, you have actually had something substantial to eat.

Other kinds of charcuterie (including the great British pork pie) normally need to be eaten the same day, or at most, kept cool and consumed within 24 hours. Smoked fish can be kept slightly longer in a cooler -- 3 or 4 days -- but you really do need a cooler.

Look out for local picnic foods, even if they have to be consumed on the same day. Once, in Florida, we ate huge steamed prawns about four times a week. At the Winn-Dixie supermarket chain they sold fresh seafood and steamed it for you at no extra charge. Frances adores prawns and could cheerfully live on them for a week or more but Roger prefers a bit more variety and even eighteen months on was in no hurry to live on prawns again.

Lunch, Hungary

If you are accustomed to the regimented supermarket food so often found in Britain and the United States, where appearance is everything and flavour is all but irrelevant, local fruit and vegetables can be a wonderful surprise in much of the world. These Hungarian radishes, cherries and strawberries were supplemented for lunch by some (imported, Italian) breadsticks, a little sausage and a bottle of Hungarian red wine. It tasted odd out of blue glasses but that is what the hotel provided in the room.

Cheese tends to be surprisingly short-lived in a motor vehicle. We used to think it was the variations in temperature, but now we have a cooler for the back of the Land Rover we suspect that vibration may also be a major contributory factor: it goes grainy or sweaty, or both, far faster on the road than at home. As a result, we regard cheese as something that is ideally bought the day you are planning to eat it, and at best kept no more than a day or two. Much the same applies to yogurts and junkets; sheeps'-milk versions generally suit us better than cows'-milk.

Butter keeps surprisingly well in a cooler if you buy the little individually wrapped pats you sometimes get in restaurants; these are easier and easier to find in supermarkets nowadays.

Finally, it may seem odd to refer to chocolate as 'fresh food' but it does melt distressingly easily in all but cool weather (or in a cooler). There is a good reason why one brand (Bendick's) is called 'Sporting and Military Chocolate'. Chocolate with a high cocoa mass (at least 70 per cent) provides a solid hit of fat, sugar and caffeine and can be very reviving; an alternative (or complement) to stopping for coffee.

Banks of the Seine

In some places, even in city centres, picnics are a way of life. In Paris, with its endless food shops, you can buy the most delicious food and eat it a few minutes later beside the river. Unless it is cold or raining, you are unlikely to be alone. Nor are there any restrictions on enjoying a bottle of wine with your meal -- unlike parts of the United States, where you can actually be arrested in some places. The same is increasingly true in the UK.

Condiments

Pepper and salt are seldom needed for canned food -- they are pretty highly seasoned already -- but they can be invaluable with fresh food. Film canisters (the sort used for 35mm film) are good, but you can buy pepper in pots with built-in mill tops and fresh-ground pepper is a real luxury: it often lifts canned food too. Before the 'best before' date, bring the mill indoors and use it at home, replacing the one in the picnic basket with a new one: pepper doth lose its savour if kept too long. Sea salt tastes saltier than ordinary table salt.

Olive oil is good with avocados but generally a bit of a hassle with other fresh salads, and quite hard to carry, so we don't normally bother. Likewise vinegar.

Drinks

As already intimated, we like our wine every day, and we find it as well to stock up if we know we are going somewhere that wine will be expensive (UK), hard to find (some parts of the USA) or not very good (Italy). Obviously reds are better at room temperature but now that we have the cooler we love to carry sparkling wines with us. There is nothing quite so refreshing as a glass of sparkling wine at the end of a long day. Another alcoholic option is a bottle of Irish whiskey, to be drunk with a great deal of soda as an aperitif or in a very small glass as a nightcap. Actually Roger likes to drink his nightcap in the bath and therefore calls it a bathcap.

In France and Spain, cider is surprisingly expensive -- similar in price to wine -- bit it is also drunk in the same way as wine, i.e. not quaffed by the mug-full but drunk in wine-glasses. Even strong cider is normally only about half the strength of wine, and sweet French cider (an entirely palatable drink, vastly superior to soda-pop) is only about 2% to 2.5% alcohol and therefore poses very little problem if you are driving after the picnic; obviously, half a bottle (375ml) of 2% cider is only the equivalent of 60ml (2 ounces or so) of strong red wine at 12,5%.

Flavoured grappas, Italy

Keep an eye open for ideas and recipes. We are not great fans of most grappas, but in Aosta they do a wide range of flavoured grappas, many of which you can re-create at home: candied angelica, for example, or various forms of citrus peel. Try a small bottle of the local specialty.

As for other drinks, Frances carries tea-bags -- many hotels provide electric kettles, though equally, many do not -- and we have found (after extensive trials) that if you like fizzy water, Perrier tastes the least disgusting when warm, with San Pellegrino as a second best. Again, a cooler is a tremendous investment: cool water, flat or fizzy, is vastly more refreshing than tepid. Milk, as far as we are concerned, must be cold: tepid milk is something that Frances can barely force down, while Roger can't at all. But it goes really well with biscuits (cookies),

Plates, cups and utensils

All right, it's a bit low on eco-awareness, but we find disposables to be far and away the best bet. This includes plates, napkins, cups/glasses and even spoons and forks, though we do use our Swiss Army knives instead of disposable knives (which are usually so fragile as to be all but useless anyway) and we also carry a pair of silver chopsticks each that we bought in China. These are easily wiped clean (see below) and are then rolled up in a piece of paper towel, or a paper napkin, and stored (both pairs) in a plastic toothpaste tube.

Indoor picnic in the Pyrenees

It was out of season and there were no restaurants open in the small town in which we were staying. The 'tablecloth' is a groundsheet, French Government issue, for marking temporary airstrips. It has numerous uses but if you are eating in a hotel room, or as here in a public room, you have an obligation to leave no marks whatsoever (some hotels forbid eating in the room anyway). More than once, we have been offered the use of a dining room (restaurant closed) or other public room in which to eat.

Another form of 'tablecloth' is black bin-liners; the debris can be dumped in it after you have finished. Bin-liners are also ideal as temporary curtains in rooms that are inadequately blacked out, as noted in the article Look at the Room. Drain cans into the toilet -- another good reason for a room with en-suite bathroom -- and rinse and drain them before putting them in the bin-bag.

Cleaning up

Baby wipes are ideal for washing your hands before and after a meal, or indeed at any other time, and for cleaning both knife-blades and chopsticks; more intricate cutlery, such as forks, really needs to be washed and dried. Buy the cheapest 'own brand' you can get, and store them in an airtight plastic box if you have any left at the end of a trip. Otherwise, the bags they come in, or Zip-Loc or similar bags, are entirely adequate.

The bottom line

As we said at the beginning of the article, there are at least six good reasons why we sometimes prefer picnics, regardless of price. Here are two more. The seventh may sound a bit 'survivalist', and isn't strictly a matter of preference, but there are times when you are bogged down or broken down and will feel a very great deal better for a meal. We were stuck in a Hungarian swamp once and were much better able to fit the snow chains (just as good in mud as in snow) after sharing a half-bottle of sparkling wine (375ml, so under 190ml each) and a couple of cans of 'cat food'.

Land Rover, ditched.

This was actually an hour after the story recited above. On the way up, the high central ridge had hung us up several times, so on the way back Roger decided to straddle one of the wheel ruts. He failed... His door was jammed shut by the earth bank in the middle of the road so we both had to scramble out of the passenger door. It was than another half hour with off-road jack, machete and entrenching tool to get out.

If we are exploring forest roads like this, we take care to set out early enough that we can un-ditch in daylight, barring the most unusual mishaps. And as we get older, we get more and more cautious (as well as experienced) in any case. If we had had real problems (injury) we would have telephoned for help: a mobile 'phone is an essential tool for the semi-adventurous traveller.

The eighth, which we have also touched upon, is that even an extravagant picnic is likely to be cheaper than any restaurant meal except low-end fast food, a cheap midday menu in France, or (perhaps) pizza, which alone among fast food can quite often rise above the general level of burgers and the like. In Europe and the United States), a cheap but decent hotel and a good picnic may well cost around 50 euros/$75/£40. Add an inexpensive breakfast (for example, pain au chocolat and coffee) and you can get away with under 60 euros/$85/£45 for the day.

For us, this translates into something like one day free for every two days we stay away, so if, like us, you are time-rich and cash-poor, you can travel more for the same money; which can't be bad. As as we think we have demonstrated, if this doesn't involve lowering your sights significantly when it comes to food and accommodation, you are well ahead of the game.

Go back to the list of articles

or to the Home Page

or contribute to our food bills with a small donation.