On Sunday, the first through-and-through sunny day of spring, we had a picnic. We packed bags with blankets, glasses, tin plates, knives and forks; filled a cool bag with beer; carried metal bowls of taramasalata, hummus, labneh, quail’s eggs, pickled cabbage and fennel salad and slung two large Afghan breads over our shoulders. We walked ten minutes to a large clump of trees on the Wanstead Flats. Not too far, far from arduous and I had looked into our little back garden and thought, wouldn’t that be easier.
Afterwards I try and work out what a picnic is, think of some rules which are not rules at all. The first seems the most simple:
a picnic is a meal outside
Yes. Of course it is. But, who in England — or another rainy place — has not thought to have a picnic inside? A cheerful thing to do, spreading a blanket on the floor of a room not normally used for eating, laying plates out… generally one’d do this on a day you’d planned to go to the beach or the park and the weather has turned. Rain streams down the window and the room lies in a gentle sort of gloom. I think this is a good picnic, though it is not a picnic if you heap your own plates of food in the kitchen. That’s just eating on the floor. The laying out is important, the presentation.
a picnic is a meal on the floor
It certainly is. One leans to the side, hand splayed out on the grass. If, like me, you are from a culture who stopped sitting on the floor and began ruining their posture, you find yourself a little uncomfortable. You lean a little more. You would lie down entirely but then you can’t eat, you hunch. The cleverest leans against the tree that provides shelter from the sun (or rain). But what about picnic benches? Names can be deceiving. The picnic bench ruins. No longer a picnic, the presence of a table has you eating outside: how lovely. I think this is because a picnic needs a sort of staking out of space, it needs someone to stand a little before the group, shout “here?” and be moved on, a few feet over there, where grass is especially soft, or the sun dapples better. If a table has already been placed in a good spot by someone else then… well, where is the freedom?
a picnic is not breakfast, lunch or dinner
A picnic is not a meal bounded in time and eschews the purpose afforded such meals. A picnic is when it occurs and if someone says “oh, it’s one o’clock we better have our picnic now!” or “well, it’s three so we’ve finished the picnic” they are an ass. A picnic is as open as the sky above. A picnic is a meal for whom leisure is the key principle.
a picnic has its own food
It doesn’t. The food I packed for my picnic on Sunday doesn’t exactly the food of an English picnic (egg and cress sandwiches, pork pies, warm ale and/or cider, spongecake) though hummus is now ubiquitous in every park picnic. Also carrots and pita bread, bought from a supermarket and not-cooked. The bread always upsets me a little. Also, all the plastic and packaging no one’s bothered to put away, everyone behaving like lost-boys without a mother to tidy up. Beside the point. The point is that picnic food does have certain rules. I didn’t think you could eat a steak at a picnic, for instance, but then I imagine making a fire a little off, unhooking an old skillet from my rucksack… I think a steak could be served if you cut it up first. Perhaps, then, picnic food has no rules but must be easily shared — plates of smallish things, or dips, breads one tears, a communality. They must be especially tasty, too.
a picnic needs a picnic blanket
We have eschewed the table, but the blanket is important. Without the blanket the picnickers are lost, little individuals. The blanket binds. There are layers — if you’re walking a long way (though not too long, a meal on a cross country walk is probably not a picnic) you may only bring one blanket, but if you have many people I like to bring a white tablecloth for the food and a softer blanket to sit on. There is a certain almost comic formality. A tablecloth on the grass! But it is beautiful too, lends grace. The most gorgeous picnics that go on near where I live are laid out by South Asian ladies: a glistening white tablecloth, cushions to sit on, cake stands, silver pots of tea and jugs of juice. Here are people doing real magic.
a meal on a cross country walk is probably not a picnic
Or is it? This is from my diary during the first lockdown:
“I walk to Berry Pomeroy, setting off about twelve, bringing with me a packet of oat cakes, a wedge of Cornish Yarg, two boiled eggs, two apples, a twist of salt and pepper and a bottle of beer, all of which fit in the pocket of the waxed coat I have been wearing. This is how a picnic ought to be on a walk: first, it must fit into the pockets of one’s coat. The only tools necessary are a knife, though that is simply to grace the meal with civilisation, and can be done away with. No plates! Bring one cloth if you must. If you have a bottle of wine, a corkscrew may be allowed, the same for glasses — the small glasses from Duralex are good. It should not be too filling as one must be able to walk home after, but mustn’t leave one hungry. It should, to some extent, mimic the food of the home: bread, cheese, egg and after fruit and after chocolate. I think it is always too disappointing to bring white wine or champagne on a walk picnic, because it will always end up warmer than one would wish. If one has the choice, a light red is the best for such a picnic, but when one has walked for miles and are terribly hungry, anything is delicious; indeed, robust, cheap country feeling wines are the best in this case.” — 4 May, 2020
This can all change, really. But what is… important, what I have decided is not a definition of a picnic - it is too malleable — but that what makes a picnic is ceremony. A picnic is an incantation: it exists through the intentions of the picnickers. It exists because it is unnecessary. When the unnecessary labour is undertaken by others — the many unpainted others of the 19th century, the unphotographed others of today — this ceremony is somewhat bankrupt. If someone who won’t eat with you carries the hamper you might as well eat at your table. But when the labour is carried out by the picnickers themselves there is something noble… here is the sort of Greed I crave, here is an illustration of our wish to indulge, our wish to consume, not simply to consume but to create little turrets and filigrees of ceremony and joy around this consumption. To squeeze every little thing from something as quotidian as eating and to take leisure as a guide. When one grumpily, a little tipsy, most likely cold trudges home with a heavy bag full of dirty plates this should be remembered.
Forest & Meadow Galette
The wild garlic has almost all gone now. It’s odd not to have picked it this year, though I did go off it a little after a surfeit during the first lockdown. If you’re lucky and clever you will have blanched some and frozen it. If not, replace the wild garlic with equal parts of the other greens and add three cloves of garlic, minced. The tips of nettles are best, more tender; their sting disappears very quickly when met with hot water. Big dandelion leaves are less bitter. Eat this tart in the meadow where you picked the dandelion, beside the forest of the nettles and garlic.
A fist sized ball of pie pastry, of your choice
1 medium onion
A big basket of wild garlic, nettles and dandelion greens; the ratio I used is about 3/6 wild garlic, 2/6 nettles and 1/6 dandelion. Add more dandelion for bitterness
Glug of dry white vermouth
1/2 a block of feta
1 or 2 egg/s
Sweat an onion, half of which is chopped, the other diced, in olive oil until translucent and then add the greens, roughly and distractedly chopped, along with a generous glug of vermouth.
When everything is blanched, taste and season, and crumble in the feta and turn your oven to 180.
While the oven heats, roll out your pastry, into a sort of square, but really any shape, neatness is not needed here. Mix an egg into the greens to bind.
Transfer the pastry to a baking sheet and spoon the greens into the middle, spreading them out a little, but making sure to have a generous mound. Roughly fold over the pastry over so that you have some of the greens showing. Brush with olive oil or a beaten egg.
Bake at 180 until the pastry is browned or golden.
This is so beautiful