Several weeks ago, I went to Ravinia, an outdoor music venue in Highland Park, IL.  It had a huge lawn that is packed with people lounging, listening to the music, drinking and, of course, eating!  Prior to the festival, I was faced with a challenge: what picnic foods should I bring to munch on during the concert?  I went to Recipe4Living for inspiration.

The very first thing I thought of was pasta salad. It keeps well, it travels well, and it doesn’t spoil if you use the right dressings.  I liked the look of these 3 pasta salad recipes:

-Pasta Salad with Tomato and Basil
-Pasta Salad with Herbs, Green Beans, and Feta
-Tortellini Salad

I decided to make a variation of the tortellini salad.  I just threw in some plum tomatoes and some broccoli to add a bit more flavor.

The next thing that came to mind was dip. We would need dip for veggies, chips, and whatever else we thought to bring.  Hummus wouldn’t do well in the heat, nor would any dairy-based sauce.  Guacamole was the winner!  But I still had to choose between these 3 great recipes:

-Easy Guacamole
-Roasted Onion Guacamole
-Guacamole with Roasted Garlic

I chose the quick option and made the easy guacamole.

The final thing I wanted to make was some kind of sandwich or wrap. These 3 sounded pretty enticing:

-BLT Wraps
-Ginger Pork Wraps
-Southwestern Chicken Wraps

For the sake of avoiding messiness, I went with the BLT wraps.  I did, however, bring the ranch dressing in a tiny container so the wraps wouldn’t be soggy by the time we got there.

After I had chosen the main components of my picnic, I threw in some chips, some carrots, some fresh strawberries, a bag of trail mix, a couple mini bottles of wine, and I was all set!

The picnic was a major success and everything tasted really good!  I encourage everyone to take advantage of this great summer weather and go have a picnic of your own!  It’s old-fashioned fun at its best.

For even more great picnic recipe ideas, click here!

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Posted by Kathryn, 5:32 PM

This entry was posted on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Entertainment, Picnic, Uncategorized, chicago, easy, food, guacamole, lunch, pasta, pasta salad, recipes, sandwich. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.