A Last Minute Picnic

The British Summer has been fairly elusive so far; May gave us a taste of warm, sunny weather, but then the entirety of June was a complete washout and so far July hasn't been much better; fingers crossed for August... The less than perfect weather doesn't mean that you can't still have a picnic though, but it is definitely safer to take advantage of those rare times when it isn't raining and go for a spontaneous one rather than planning in advance. You could even have an indoor picnic; there is something quite fun and rebellious about eating your food on a blanket on the floor rather than at the table; or you could have a bed picnic! (watch out for crumbs).

Sussex based pie and quiche maker Higgidy have teamed up with British lifestyle brand Joules to celebrate the season of spontaneous picnics despite the rubbish weather (check out their packs, there are lots of prizes to be won); they challenged me to create a beautiful, spur-of-the-moment picnic held wherever the moment took me and sent me some of their new ham hock and petit pois quiche and vegetarian feta and red pepper rolls to enjoy on my picnic. We opted one lunchtime to go and have lunch in the park, rather than while sat at our desks as per usual. Fortunately it wasn't raining, just threatening to do so, and we had time to enjoy our lunch and get home before the rain started - win!

You don't need a huge variety of food to make a good picnic and a quick dash to the shop on the way to the park is all you need to put together a decent spread; just some sandwiches, nibbly bits (in this case the lovely quiche and rolls that I was sent, along with a selection of cheeses), something sweet and something to drink. I had just so happened to have baked some little syrupy lemon, olive oil and semolina cakes the day beforehand so they served very well as our something sweet; they are very quick to whip up so if you decide in the morning that you want to go for a picnic that day you can easily have them ready in time; I'll be sharing the recipe for them next week. The feta and red pepper veggie rolls were absolutely delicious and I ate a slightly embarrassingly large quantity of them... Damian doesn't usually like quiche and will rarely eat it willingly, but even he thoroughly enjoyed the ham hock and petit pois quiche so Higgidy must be doing something right!

Of course Ringo the dog had to come along; picnics are not a very regular occurrence for us so he had a fantastic time and particularly enjoyed the cheese selection.

Games are a must for any good picnic, especially if they involve sticks.

This post is sponsored by Higgidy. Thank you for supporting the brands that keep Domestic Gothess running.