Around the Kitchen Table: Summer Picnic Food + 4-Book #Giveaway

 

 

LESLIE KARST: "Official" summer doesn't arrive for a few more weeks, but since Memorial Day has passed, we can now wear white gloves and declare that the summer "season" is upon us. Which means lots of outdoor dining--be it picnics, BBQs, potlucks, or simply buying a hotdog from a street-side vendor and enjoying it on a convenient bench.  

So the question in the Kitchen today is, what is your favorite picnic or finger-food? (Napkins will be provided for those with white gloves.)

For me, it's gotta be deviled eggs. (Have you ever noticed that they're always the first thing to disappear at potlucks?) And other than peeling the darn things, which always seems to be a pain, whether the eggs are fresh or a month old, they're so easy to make! Here's one of my favorite recipes for deviled eggs, with cumin and chutney.

 

Fellow MLKers, what picnic foods do you look forward to come summertime?

Readers: Comment below for a chance to win 4 fabulous books from our Mystery Lovers' Kitchen authors!

 

🌿 🍳 🌱

LESLIE BUDEWITZ:  I'm with you on the deviled eggs, and your variation sounds delish. Now, if this hypothetical meal is a picnic, I'd bring a huge bowl of this Tortellini Salad. It's my reconstruction of one I often got as takeout in a deli on the ground floor of the building where I worked in Seattle--readers of my Spice Shop mysteries will recognize it as Ripe, the deli run by Pepper's good friend Laurel. It was one of the first dishes I figured out how to recreate from something I'd loved, when I didn't have a recipe, and that's still big food fun in our house. 

If we're staying home, or we're coming to your house and you've got the grill on, I'd bring these Grilled Caprese Skewers, what my hunny aptly calls Summer on a Stick.

Curiously, both recipes originally appeared in Treble at the Jam Fest, in my Food Lovers' Village series. It's great fun to give the characters I love the food I love!

📚 📚 📚

Libby Klein I go to a lot of picnics away from home. Having several food intolerances, I have to be careful with what I choose, but my main rule after gluten is avoid mayonnaise. Those deviled eggs are at the top of my must-have list when the barbecue is at my house. And I bet all the cooks in the Mystery Lovers' Kitchen make amazing deviled eggs. But If I'm going to an all day outdoor event in the summer at ninety plus degrees, I prefer not to get food poisoning. My Gluten-free Pasta Salad is a great choice since everything is safe in the heat. Plus all those fresh vegetables and a really good olive oil is such a healthy choice that you can splurge on one of my gluten-free strawberry hand pies!

🍅🌞

MADDIE DAY: I love summer picnics. And I'm with Libby on no picnic mayo away from home when it's warm out. I included a mayo-free Avocado Deviled Eggs recipe in Murder at the Taffy Shop, which would be a perfect picnic food.

Olive oil in a salad is a great picnic choice, but so is sesame oil. The Asian Noodle Salad recipe I shared as a Mystery Lovers' Kitchen guest before I was a regular blogger here is a perfect room temperature picnic food.

Robbie Jordan served the dish in her country store restaurant back in Death Over Easy, which takes place in July.

🌿 🥚 🌱

PEG COCHRAN/MARGARET LOUDON: You need dessert at a picnic, right?  After you've polished off the deviled eggs, chips and dips and pasta salad.  Cookies are a natural.  They are a "finger food" dessert--delicious and easy to eat.  They're easy to pass around and can be made to accommodate any size crowd.  I'd bring a plate of these white chocolate cranberry orange cookies that Monica Albertson baked in Berried Motives, book #6 in my Cranberry Cove Series.

 

KORINA MOSS: My favorite finger food for any occasion is... (surprise, surprise) cheese! This was just one of several cheeseboards for the outdoor launch party of my first book, Cheddar Off Dead. But what I like about cheese is that you can get as elaborate as you want or you can have just one or two kinds, even without accompaniments. It's easy to pack, easy to eat, great for a crowd, and always delicious. 

VMBURNS: My favorite picnic food is roasted corn. I love corn in pretty much all of it's variations (boiled, fried, roasted, etc.), but there is something extra yummy about roasting corn on a grill. 

 

MAYA CORRIGAN: I wish I could go to a picnic where each us brought the dishes we're describing here. Watermelon is the food I associate with summer and picnics. When I was growing up, eating outdoors meant we could spit the big black seeds on the ground. Now that we have (mostly) seedless watermelon available for much of the year, I eat it more often, sometimes in combination with other fruit, as in the recipe I shared for watermelon berry salad. 

☕ 🌻 ☕

CLEO COYLE: I think of picnic food as comfort food, and I’m always up for fried chicken and potato salad. Last summer, I shared my recipe for Mock Potato Salad, which is a nice option for anyone watching carbs. The recipe is delicious with standard potatoes, too, and I use baby reds and baby Yukon golds when I make it that way. 

As for the "mock" version, which subs cauliflower for the taters, there are some tricks to getting the best results, and I shared what I've learned in this recipe. Does it taste exactly like the real thing? No. But it's close. And if you or your loved ones are looking for a creamy, crunchy, low-carb side for a picnic, this one is worth a try. Have a delicious summer, everyone! ~ Cleo 

My Mock Potato Salad. Chilly. Crunchy. Creamy.
And good for you, too. Click here for the recipe
& downloadable PDF.

B O O K  
G I V E A W A Y!

Readers: What are your favorite foods of summer (white gloves not required)? Include your email address in case you win our fabulous giveaway!

Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder by Valerie Burns

Death Over Easy by Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell)

Treble at the Jam Fest by Leslie Budewitz

Molten Death by Leslie Karst