Summer Concert Seafood Picnic Dinner

June 3, 2010

The summer is arriving! Tonight Rick and I are attending our first evening concert of the summer season. In our family, this has become somewhat of a ritual event. We watch Shakespeare on the lawn, big band music, fireworks, Beach Boys and tonight an review of the Cycles: The Songs of a Lifetime…and we’ll find out what they are. We have eaten on blankets, in chairs,underwaterfalls, by rivers, oceans, parks,  stages and also been eaten by bugs (uggh!) This is one of our favorite ways to spend the evening. We think we’re even pretty good at it! We have a little rolled up table in a bag (from Crate and Barrel) that keeps nature away from dinner, and we just eat our way through the bounty of summer.

5 Steps to a Great Picnic

 Picnics should be easy and fun. In ours we always try to feature the bounty of summer as it ripens – so our menu changes some depending on the month and the temperature – but the good news is that fresh food is usually healthier too! First there are some rules:

1. Almost all food should be finger food. You never know how you will be surprised by your locale and you memory!

2. Have some favorites but try something new!

3. Don’t pack more than you can carry!

4. If you have a group, let everyone contribute – keep life easy!

5. Make anything you can disposable so there’s no clean up at the end.

Seafood Supper by the Sea

Tonight’s dinner is in a park by the ocean in North Carolina so we’ll be having dinner to celebrate the time and location. It will be about 3 hours so we’ll do three courses.

What’s fresh right now at the end of May? Those go on the list first and then I build around them. – Strawberries (we pick our own), Peaches the early crop from Georgia, asparagus and fresh local seafood.

1. I start with the main course, it sets the tone of the meal. In this case seafood. My favorite in the summer is ceviche – a seafood dish that actually cooks itself in lime juice so it’s cool and refreshing and doesn’t heat up the kitchen. Regardless of your recipe, I can pretty much use whatever is local and add the fresh herbs from your garden. If you want to try variations you can explore a world of ceviche varieties.  Here in the Carolina’s there will also be shrimp on the menu, in the ceviche, but probably also with appetizers to just dip in cocktail sauce and enjoy the sweetness. Since I like the ceviche more than Rick, there will probably be some salmon too topped with yogurt blended with Over the Edge Herbed Spinach. Then I’ll either roast some red potatoes or make a couscous salad for the side.

2. Appetizers – grazing gone wild! Lot’s of crisp cut vegetables to dip or munch straight. Make a dip from your favorite seasoning using your favorite base, sour cream, yogurt, may or a combination. A little steamed asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. And a big bowl of the fresh strawberries with Snickerdoodle Sweet Cheeseball Mix blended in whipped topping as a dip.

3. Dessert – Here’s where my peaches (and a lot of other fresh fruit) go. Believe it or not, Rick will tackle these this afternoon. He will grill the peach halves and pineapple spears brushed with a little brown sugar melted with balsamic vinegar . Or you can eat them fresh with a little balsamic vinegar topping(the really good stuff) and some biscotti for texture. If my daughter were here, we’d flip it around and have chocolate dipped strawberries instead – but that will be next weekend.

Wear comfortable clothes, take a good book and a citronella candle and enjoy!

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Filed under: Barbeque Recipes, Easy Entertaining, Easy Meal Ideas, Healthy Living, Inspirations

Tags: : asparagus, asparagus recipes, baskets picnkic, ceviche, picnic dinner, quick easy dinner recipes