A Quick Picnic

Summer is picnic season and we had our first family picnic last night (at It's Your Festival, a weekend-long Canada Day celebration).

Many of our picnics are spur-of-the-moment affairs, so I like to be able to pull some inexpensive yet tasty treats on short notice.

Here's what was in our cooler yesterday:

Lime and Garlic Chicken

Potato Salad with Bacon and Garlic Scapes (recipe below)

Tossed Green Salad (veggies from our CSA share)

We didn't pack any dessert, since we planned to enjoy our traditional festival chocolate-soft-serve cones. Otherwise, I would have packed some quick homemade bars or cookies. I'm planning to try these Lemon-Cornmeal Cookies from Cooking Light magazine soon; Gingersnaps are another picnic-perfect family favourite (no chocolate chips to melt all over the place on a hot day!)

We usually bring a family-sized thermos jug of lemonade along, but yesterday we just had ice water as the kids had already polished off our lemonade (which reminds me, I need to stock up on lemonade again when it's on sale).

Potato Salad with Bacon and Garlic Scapes
I decided to toss the garlic scapes from this week's CSA share into my potato salad, with delicious results. You could substitute fresh green beans for a similar texture and flavour.
[Sorry no photo - still no digital camera!]

Time: 30 minutes
Serves: 6 as a side dish

Ingredients:
6-8 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2" chunks
1 medium onion, chopped
4 strips regular or turkey bacon
1 bunch garlic scapes, chopped into 1" pieces
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 green onions, sliced
3/4 cup mayonnaise
2 tsp honey mustard
1/4 tsp each salt and pepper

Preparation:

1. Cook potatoes and onion together in boiling water until potatoes are tender. Drain potatoes; refill pot with cold water and set aside to let potatoes cool.

2. While potatoes are cooking, cook bacon until crisp; cool and crumble.

3. In same pan used to cook bacon, saute garlic scapes in olive oil until tender-crisp (if you used regular bacon, you may have enough bacon drippings to skip the olive oil).

4. In large mixing bowl, combine bacon, garlic scapes, garlic, green onions, mayonnaise, mustard, salt and pepper.

5. Drain potatoes thoroughly and add to dressing mixture; stir well to combine. Serve warm or chilled.

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net