Easy Picnic Food to Enjoy Anywhere

Here are some ideas and recipes for packable picnic food to enjoy outdoors as a family, along with easy picnic food for kids. Grab a basket and lay out a blanket, life was made for sunny days!


 
    Best Tossed Salad With Green Goddess Dressing

    Kristy Pepping:  Picnics are perfect for salads. They are super easy to pack and provide some much-needed veggies on a warm day. The nice thing about this recipe is it involves two simple steps. You create the dressing and chop up the salad ingredients. You can either choose to leave the dressing off until you arrive at your picnic or premix it in depending on how close by you will be going.

    From CountryLiving

    Homemade Pink Lemonade

    Kristy Pepping:  For some reason, when I think of picnics, I think lemonade. This recipe takes a twist on just using plain lemons and adds raspberries. It not only looks pretty, but both lemons and raspberries offer a lot when it comes to needed vitamins and antioxidants. For easy transporting, simply pour it into a thermos.

    From Bitz & Giggles

    Best Charred Scallion Dip Recipe

    Kristy Pepping:  When we go on picnics either in the backyard or to our local park, we like to pack cut up veggies. They are super easy to transport. One way to spruce up plain veggies is with a dip. Plus, if you have a picky eater, it's a great way to get him or her to eat vegetables. This dip is just a few ingredients so fairly easy to whip together.

    From Woman'sDay

    Chicken Salad

    Shila:  Chicken Salad sandwiches are hardy, refreshing, and taste perfectly fine outdoors at room temperature. They keep well in between bread, or as a dip to some crackers. Simply shred or dice-up baked chicken and add mayonnaise. This elegant recipe for the Best-Ever Chicken Salad, too, suggests additional options to include in the mix. Many people love including raisins, almond slices, dill, crumbled bacon, walnuts, etc.

    From How To Feed A Loon

    Antipasto Skewers

    Kristy Pepping:  Normally you use skewers on the grill, but they are also great for picnics. This recipe is for antipasto skewers, but you can really add anything like pieces of cut-up fruit or vegetables as well. If you have little ones attending your picnic, skewers are great for just transporting their food as well. You can easily slide everything off and onto their plates once you arrive at your destination.

    From Live Love Pasta

    Easy Cheesy Party Bread

    Shila:  Cheesy bread is an easy picnic food for kids on the run. Just pull apart a slice and enjoy it while you play! Simply purchase any round loaf of bread, such as sourdough, and use a knife to cut a row of diagonal slices without piercing through the bottom. Tuck a slice of cheese and/or any other ingredients of your liking (i.e., olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, oregano) into the slats and bake it in the oven for a little bit to melt in the flavors before heading out!

    From Gather For Bread

    Pepperoni Pizza Pasta Salad

    Shila:  Pepperoni Pizza Pasta Salad is a favorite picnic food for kids. The recipe calls for cooked bow tie pasta topped with slices of pepperoni, bite-size cubes of mozzarella cheese, and a cup of clear Italian dressing. You can hide some veggies like diced bell peppers in there, too. Deliciously served chilled or at room temperature, this is an easy picnic food to enjoy.

    From Pillsbury

    Pad Thai

    Shila:  Pad Thai is stir-fry dish predominately made with rice noodles, crushed peanuts, scrambled egg, bean sprouts, tofu, and a meat of choice. The ingredients are sautéed together in a wok and tossed in a delicious sauce generally made of fish sauce, sugar, and tamarind paste or rice vinegar. It's a surprisingly low-maintenance dish to eat outdoors, with a fun bonus if you can enjoy them using chopsticks!

    From Tastes Better From Scratch

    Easy No-Bake Granola Bars Recipe

    Shila:  Add these No-Bake Granola Bars to your arsenal of awesome recipes for picnic food and easy dessert recipes for kids. They are sweet, satisfying, and protein-packed with healthy ingredients to help you and your kids feel energized all afternoon. The main ingredients simply require old-fashioned oats, nut butter, honey or maple syrup, vanilla extract, and cinnamon. Then, you can choose to add-in any combination of nuts, chocolate chips, seeds, dried fruit, coconut, etc. Chop everything together in a food processor and invite the mixture to sit in a baking dish for about an hour. Once firm, cut some bars and pack them in your picnic basket to go!

    From Cookie And Kate

    Lemon Muffins

    Shila:  Muffins are a delicious and easy picnic dessert. They're simple to pack on-the-go in a basket, they keep well, and are equally great to pop-in-your-mouth to devour! This particular recipe for homemade Lemon Muffins is quite simple and sweet, too. Throw your dry ingredients in one bowl and the liquids into another, and then combine the two together by hand. After a few turns of the spatula, your muffin batter is ready to be baked in the oven in less than ~30 minutes.

    From Pretty Simple Sweet

    New Orleans Muffuletta Stuffed Sandwich

    Shila:  Don't be intimidated by unconventional picnic recipes like Muffuletta Stuffed Sandwiches, for example. This New Orleans-inspired staple is not only interesting and delicious, but it's very simple to prepare, pack, and eat outdoors while on picnic. Just buy a round loaf of focaccia bread at the grocery store and layer in a mix of meats, cheeses, and some additional tangy-olive flavors. If this is too unique of a picnic food for kids, then omit or substitute the fillers with anything else they love.

    From Olive Magazine

Primary photo:   Kylie Lugo on Unsplash

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