Urban Picnicking Why You Should Go and How to Start

JZ and I love creating new, interesting family bike adventures. We use bikes as transport, but we also like to mix it up a bit on the weekends with different destinations. Riding to the park, gelato shop, and the other park is fine, but sometimes we yearn for a bit more. Sometimes we go far, cycling around Manly, down the Cook’s river, and to Nielsen Park. Today, I share a shorter bike adventure: urban picnicking.

I like my daydream vision of picnicking: sitting on a festive blanket in a sea of green, nibbling mini appetizers, cheese, and fruit. After piquing our hunger, we unpack the remainder of our quaint and delightful woven picnic basket, revealing fresh, enormous pasta salads, oversized sandwiches, and lastly, an epic dessert, with berries and whipped cream. It’s a beautiful picture, worth a summer magazine spread or movie scene. But then I think of the time in the kitchen, prepping and packing, and it seems like too much of a hassle. I like picnics because I get to spend time outside, not to spend more time in my kitchen, packing and unpacking food.

Regardless, I feel the occasional need to sit down cross-legged outside, while eating quality food – unprocessed and homemade. I learned this need without the prep work of traditional picnicking, and I even have a clever name for it, “urban picnicking”.

Instead of bringing your food from home to the park, buy it while out on a ride (or walk), and then find a nice place to eat. The less fancy version is known as “what can throw together for lunch at the grocery store for immediate consumption.” Urban picnicking, however, is almost as instagram-worthy as traditional picnicking, when done right, so let’s lay down the rules.

Rules for Urban Picnicking

• Must walk or bike to the grocer
• Allowable items: 1 knife, 1 cutting board, 1 bowl, plus individual utensils, and glasses
• Pre-cooked food purchases allowed, but not as a full meal. (No Stir-fry!)
• Maximum 10 minutes of prep time
• Must sit on the ground – no chairs for you!

Bonus tip: Leave the house mildly interested in food, not ravenous

Instead of our usual stop at Woolies for premade smoothies, bread, and fruit, we took it a step further last weekend. Well actually, we literally took it a few steps closer…we went local.

The Eveleigh Farmer’s Market

Click to check out the apple man’s site

If you follow us on Instagram, you know that we are regulars at the Eveleigh farmer’s markets (despite the fact that I consistently call it the “EveRleigh markets”). This small, bustling market is chock full of anything and everything local, organic, and pasture-raised that we could ever want or need. When I’m not shopping for any specific items, I enjoy slowly walking the stalls to see which vendors are new, what’s in season, and maybe sampling some bread, cheese, or spreads on display.

We don’t often eat bread, cheese, or cured meats, but each time I venture out to sample goods from one of the artisans here, I think we should. I am always impressed by the superior quality, even if my palate still needs more training.

As a final note, I will point out that the Eveleigh Markets are super close to our apartment and totally bike friendly. Naturally, that sounds like a place you might run into us, as we enjoy local coffees, fruits, foods, art and more.

Urban Picnicking at Eveleigh Markets

I start our story with the confession that we made a critical error in our planning process, and arrived at the markets quite hungry. This meant that instead of being able to distinguish and appreciate the vast options, we rushed, miscommunicated, and stressed each other out. Part of the fun of urban picnicking is the “Iron Chef” challenge atmosphere. You have loads of ingredients at your finger tips, so the key is developing a cohesive plan that blends them all together. Unlike Iron Chef, you have no kitchen and minimal prep time so you can’t just pull out the ice cream machine to whip up some a white-chocolate miso gelato dessert.

As I mentioned before, I was not in the best headspace for this challenge, but we committed, so we continued on. Because I wanted to make things even more difficult, I challenged myself to remove bread from the lunch equation. In the end, we needed some extra carbs for sustenance, but we gave it a valiant effort. A big thanks to the Bread and Butter Project for spotting us 60 cents for our loaf. (Side note: Bring cash!)

Facing the rows of food stalls, I tried to channel my inner Cat Cora, and brainstormed creative options within the constraints facing back at me. Countless vegetables surrounded me, a few meat and cheese options, and oh look, what is that by the corner? Bone broth? How absolutely appealing!

I used the bone broth as my inspiration to concocted a quick, basic soup. The trickiest part was deciding which vegetables to put into the soup; most soups contain long-cooking vegetables, but we only had the initial heat from the soup to wilt vegetables. I snooped around the stalls looking for good greens to add to the soup. Spinach could work, silverbeet might be a little to fibrous, bok choy is a possibility if I sliced it really thinly…ah Watercress!

With the quick-wilting, peppery vegetable in hand, I marched into the bathroom to give it a good wash (aka remove the numerous bugs that were very attached to their current home – yay organic!). While nonchalantly rinsing my greens in the small porcelain sink, a thoughtful and concerned woman mentioned that she wasn’t sure if the sink water met drinking standards. What an excellent point!

I never considered the drinkability of the tap water and hastily retrieved my greens. JZ thoroughly rinsed them in the water we bought with us.

Next up the meat. I thought the soup would require some heartiness and flavour, and cured meat was our only option since most vegetables and beans would not fit our constraints. We sampled the offerings at La Bastide, and loved their soft, peppery saucisson. CZ immediately used one of her favorite phrases, “more peas”, to request additional samples, and with her lamb hat on, the vendor could not resist. I decided we could easily dice the meat and add it to the broth soup for a deep flavour, saltiness, and bit of kick from the peppercorns.

With the main dish sorted, I moved on to the appetizer. I like the combination of sweet and salty, so I looked for a complementary fruit and cheese pairing. Unfortunately, the fruit selection is a bit thin in the winter, but we did have a choice between pears, apples, and nectarines. I thought the pears would pair nicely with some cheese so we headed down a few stands.

We sampled a few different types of ewe’s milk cheese earlier in our visit at Pecora Dairy, and thought the creaminess of the mezza cheese would augment a sweet, crisp pear nicely. My original plan included a pear and mezza toast appetizer, but we were all a bit hangry. CZ devoured the pears almost as fast as I could cut them. There was little mixing of pears and cheese..

Above is a shot of our final meal. An oat and rye bread with sheep’s cheese, a bone broth soup with peppery watercress and satisfying sausage, and ending with delicate, juicy pears. We finished with a considerable amount of leftovers to take home, full bellies, and a sense of accomplishment.

Know Before You Go – Urban Picknicking

Don’t go hungry or hangry! – These states overwhelm your natural disposition, and it’s easy to see all of the items you can’t make, instead of all the possibilities. You will be in a foul mood, trying to scrape something together, and not enjoying the creative process – not that we have any experience with these constraints. 😉

Bring water and towels to rinse/wipe your vegetables – we are glad we had enough water to re-rinse our greens after realizing the sink water may not have been potable.

Don’t stress – this is a fun adventure. If the produce falls short between seasons, there are usually food vendors with delicious offerings. The goal is a nice day outside with friends and/or family.

Don’t expect a cheap meal – Some of our urban picnics are pretty affordable, but It’s not always a cheap endeavor. This meal cost about the price of two mains at a cafe, although we did have a good bit of leftovers to take home with us.

Meal Ideas

Below are some meal ideas that we have either used or plan to in the coming months. Some of the items are more geared more towards the grocery store than the farmer’s market.

• Rotisserie chicken + prewashed salad + bleu cheese crumbles + dried cranberries
• Sandwiches of all types: cheese and fruit; dried meat, cheese, and tomatoes
• Burrito bowls:  precooked brown rice, canned beans, cheese, and avocado
• Tuna salad: tuna + olive oil + basil leaves + crackers
• hard boiled eggs + smashed avocado on toast
• Soups: if you can get your hands on hot broth

Share this with someone, and go Urban Picnicking together!