We occasionally enjoy what we call ‘picnics’ at home (a table laden with assembled foods, not cooked, or at least not cooked by me that evening), on particularly warm evenings or on any other occasion when it makes sense and the concept feels particularly enticing.  I can normally assemble this sort of thing without planning ahead, since we always have on hand most of what I would want to include in such a meal; it’s just normally just a matter of deciding to put it together, and that adds to the appeal of the arrangement.

 

 

• this picnic spread included 3 ounces of Principe Prosciutto di San Daniele from Whole Foods; mixed olives from Buon Italia (in a small black bowl almost out of the picture above); parti-colored radishes (‘easter radishes’) which I had picked up from Willow Wisp Organic Farm on their first day at the Union Square Greenmarket; a few Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods sprinkled with calamint, aka nepitella; 4 cheeses (Consider Bardwell Farm‘s goat cheese, ‘Manchester’, their cow pasteurized cow cheese, ‘Experience’, and their raw milk cow cheese, ‘Dorset’, as well as a somewhat funky ‘Jean-Louis’ semisoft cow milk cheese from Bobolink Dairy); some ‘Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter‘, a salad composed of arugula from John D. Madura Farms, radicchio from Hawthorne Valley Farm, sliced spring shallots from Lani’s Farm, wild mint from Berried Treasures Farm, parsley from Stokes Farm; and slices of a very rich, moist, and very sturdy rustic bread, the fantastic 7-grain ‘Sette Grani‘ of Grandaisy
• the wine was a French (Provence) rosé, Famille Sumeire Château Coussin Le Rosé de S. Méditerranée 2015, from Chelsea Wine Vault
• the music was from Counterstream radio, streaming