Where's my Pickinic Basket?!

We’re off to Ravinia two times this week. Ravinia is a music pavillion in the northern suburbs of Chicago, but the key thing about it is that it has lawn seating. People come bearing picnics and blankets (and everyone over 40 brings camp chairs, which seem to lose the spirit of the thing to me, but I suppose it’s helpful for the rheumantism) and settle down to enjoy live music piped over the large leafy park.

I had two New Years Resolutions this year:

1. Take more photos

2. Have more picnics

We never did much in the way of picnics as a child. If fact, if we went to Ravinia, we usually brought a bucket of fried chicken. However, in Norway, picnics became something of a necessity to us. Eating out is very expensive and there aren’t too many places to do it. So, when we would take advantage of the 10 pound Ryan Air deals out of Haugesund, we would drive an hour or so through the tunnels and ferries with a packed lunch, to be enjoyed whereever space was available and/or scenic.

I got it down to a science. The archetypical Sjurseth picnic consisted of:

Sandwiches: a baguette filled with roasted deli chicken, salami, letttuce, paper thin sliced tomatoes, oregano, and dressed with vinegar and oil. Sliced into individual portions.
Sorlands Chips: Yummy Norwegian kettle cooked chips with Salt and Pepper
Apples: 2
Clementines: 4
Bottled Water
Coke

Dessert: Cookies if a special occasion, candy bars if not

This is a lot of food and we didn’t necessarily eat it all in one go, but it’s very nice to know there are tasty available sandwiches when it’s 11pm in rural Lutheran Norway and you aren’t even sure if the gas stations are open. Normally, I would pack it in two small mesh Old Navy Halloween bags (which got a lot of attention in Norway), but we have a cute little picnic backpack that Knut carries around sometimes. It even has a wine caddy and a cheese board.

I think for our Ravinia trips we’ll probably be a bit more formal. Everyone keeps talking about cold chicken and potato salad, which are very fine picnic foods indeed.