Picnic and picnic hamper envy

There wasn't anyone who seemed like I could persuade to spare a couple of plastic cups, so these were our wine vessels, that curiously resembled Christine and I in real life (height-wise). We went to the New York Philharmonic outdoors in Central Park and packed a last minute picnic. I toted along my last slab of cheese and have been cheese free for 3 days and am getting a little ANTSY.



mmmm cheese.



Sorry! Excuse the inappropriate knife usage!

Delicious cheese, made even more deliciouser with local cherries. This was an Italian cow's milk Mountain Gorgonzola and is aged between 6-12 months. According to the Murray's Cheese shop desciption, it is PUNCHY and SPICY. YEAH! It is lovely. Christine gave me a cheese voucher for my birthday and wrote "Extravagant cheese for recession times". I'll have to dig out and put towards next week's cheese fund. Just thinking about cheese makes me want to run down to Grand Central and load up. ugh. Restraint!

I made friends with some of my neighbors sitting around me. One of them was a British doctor reading a book of translated Chinese poems and had spent a year working in KK Hospital in the 1970s, another was a Jamaican who seemed to know a lot about Singapore. We all shared the same birth city: London



The spoils: I made some German-esque style potato salad (cold) with garlic scapes, a mustard vinaigrette (whole mustrad seeds), basil olive oil and white wine vinegar. I also made some cucumber yogurt dip with plain yogurt, lemon juice, smashed up garlic, cucumbers, salt and pepper. Christine supplied the chips, wine and grape leaves. Delicious times for cultured events!

Movies in the park sometimes call for pizza, but a symphony orchestra calls for a semi extravagant picnic. Thank goodness I didn't have any food envy, but I may have had a case of picnic hamper envy. I looked some up on the interweb when I got home.

OBSERVE:



Baguette consideration = very good.



Plate/Cutlery and food separation = TREASURE CHEST OF FOOD = most excellent




Seems to have what appears to be a cooler compartment for food. GREAT! I don't need breakable glasses coming along on my picnic, so those can be cheese compartments. Very nice!

And then I saw this portrait of ridicule:



Come on get real! There is no way all of that is squeezing into that hamper! Who eats that much processed food on a picnic anyway? hmm ok scratch that. But I shelved my picnic hamper plans quite quickly after realizing that my plain old expandable cooler was just fine.



Someone's looking extremely happy for a Grumpy (right)!