Low-Carb Picnics: 3 Fabulous Options

Three Low-Carb Picnics: Downton Abbey-style, Beyond Sandwiches, and Picnicking with Kids

Once upon a time, “picnic” meant packing up your outdoor dining tent, the silver, the linens, a wagonload of food, another wagonload of serving staff, and enough folding wooden furniture to outfit a small hotel.

Very few do Downton Abbey-style picnics anymore, unless it’s for a $200/plate fundraiser, just as we no longer equate “camping” with watching our gardeners build an outdoor room out of fabric, complete with chandelier.

Still, it’s different than simply carrying food from your kitchen to a picnic table right outside your back door, which is what my parents called a “picnic”. We’d get all wound up, thinking we were going to eat on a blanket by a river somewhere, only to find out we were going to eat beside our bedroom windows with the charming ambience and light roar of the central air conditioner. Yippee. Eventually the charms of our backyard were not enough inducement to fight with the tiny black beetles that inevitably figured out we were using the old picnic table for something other than Play-doh™ sculpting, and we’d have to “picnic” inside.

One of the first things I did with my future husband was go on a picnic. Not just any picnic, but to an outdoor symphonic concert on the Fourth of July! On a river, at a living history museum. It was magical. All around us, people were pulling out chilled bottles of wine, cheese boards, even entire cakes. No little black beetles in sight.

After we married, we often took picnics to the woods, the beach, city parks, and even onto lighthouses as we traveled or hiked. We continued doing so after we had our kids. Don’t get me wrong; we still enjoy eating outside at twilight, sitting back watching the kids catch fireflies as our meal cooks on the grill. But we don’t call it a picnic. We call that “summer suppers” — which could be the topic of a future article.

A picnic is also a totally separate thing from a barbecue. I know in some areas the line is blurring between a picnic and a barbecue (I’m looking at you, modern U.K.). Barbecues typically involve a grill, someone in front of it wielding oversized utensils while wearing a humorous apron, either kids or dogs getting dangerously close to the grill, and at least one back-seat griller commenting on whether the color of the dripping juices indicates done-ness. And maybe a radio tuned to a sporting event.

This article is not about barbecues. This is a picnic.

There are several ways to picnic, from the classic Victorian hunting party-style picnic, all the way up to pulling some beef jerky and cheese out of a backpack cliff-side. We’re going to hit a range in the middle here, from a slightly more formal picnic to picnicking with kids.

A Picnic Without Mrs. Patmore

I’m sure we all wish we had a Mrs. Patmore in our kitchens, as well as a Daisy, cooking up elegant meals. (For the uninitiated, Mrs. Patmore is the cook at Downton Abbey, and Daisy her assistant.) Most of us have to be our own Mrs. Patmore and the entire staff.

That doesn’t mean we can’t come up with our own luscious spread, worthy of Downton’s best. Most of us won’t be participating in a shooting party, but many of us might be attending an outdoor symphony or theater production. You won’t need to bring a staff of 18, dining tent and your silver service for this menu, but you will probably need more than just a blanket. A picnic hamper, ice bucket, and serving utensils would be a good idea.

Low-Carb Marinated Asparagus Salad

Low-Carb Madeira Cake

Beyond Sandwiches

Anyone can make a few sandwiches, but not everyone can eat them. And we’ve all seen plenty of picnic menus of the usual “Ham salad sandwich, coleslaw, potato chips” ilk. This next menu is for those times when you need to throw a cooler in the car and go, but don’t want the same old thing. Almost nothing needs a lot of prior preparation, so this is great for last-minute picnics!

Romaine Roll-Ups: Large Romaine Lettuce Leaves

• 2-3 kinds of sliced meats: smoked turkey breast, pastrami, peppered beef. Read labels for no added sugars!
• 2-3 kinds of sliced cheeses: Finlandia makes a 4-pack, sold at Costco, that includes cheddar, Colby-Jack, Swiss, and Monterey Jack
• Your favorite mustards, salad dressings
• Cream Cheese Spreads

On a plate, lay 2-3 romaine lettuce leaves out so that they are flat and overlapping. Add enough cheese slices to cover the lettuce. Then top with enough meat to cover the cheese, leaving 1/2” or so to each side.

Put a thick line of cream cheese spread down the center, and then add your favorite mustards and/or salad dressings. You can also add sunflower seeds, crumbled bacon, a little sliced onion, carrots, slices of avocado, sliced jicama or other salad vegetables.

Carefully begin rolling from one of the long sides, stopping to fold up the bottom about halfway through before finishing the roll. Begin eating at the open end.

Nutrition counts are going to vary, depending on what meats, cheeses, and condiments you use. Nutrition information for the cream cheese spreads is below.



Berry Cream Cheese Spread

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 large strawberries or 1/3 cup raspberries

With a fork, mash the fruit until uniformly mashed. Add to the cream cheese and stir until well combined. Store in a covered container.

4 servings, each with: 200 calories, 20g fat (88% fat), 4g protein, 2g carbohydrates, trace fiber, 2g usable carb.

For Provencal Cream Cheese Spread, instead of the berries, add 1/2 teaspoon of thyme and 1/2 teaspoon of rosemary to the softened cream cheese. Or you could do 1/2 tablespoon Herbs de Provence if you have it.

Low-Carb Hibiscus Iced Tea

Hibiscus is used all over Africa, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean in various drinks. It has the unique property of helping you feel cooler in hot weather, actually lowering your temperature more than drinking the same volume of other drinks of the same temperature. It also lowers blood pressure and acts as a mild diuretic! It tastes quite a bit like cranberry juice with a bit of cherry and raspberry in it. I’ve been able to get very small children to drink it with no problem.

The recipe is so simple it’s almost not even a recipe:

 Put one loose cupful of hibiscus flowers into a sun tea jar. It’s a good idea to do this in cheesecloth or an herb bag so you can easily retrieve the flowers later.

Pour over them 1 gallon of boiling water. Add the equivalent of 1/4 cup of sugar in your favorite no-carb sweetener.

 Allow to cool – this will take several hours. The tea will turn ruby-red, and have a richer flavor the longer it brews. Taste, adjust sweetener, then refrigerate until needed. I always make a tray of ice cubes out of this and put it back in the jar to take on picnics.

Knee-High to a Grasshopper: Low-Carb Picnic with Kids

This is where some of the sweetest and most ironic memories are made (yes, they will make the biggest messes of their lives when there is no running water available). The key is to keep it simple. I don’t assume my kids won’t eat adult food, but many kids will only eat “kid food”.

So in that case, your best bet is to take the Beyond Sandwiches menu, and add to it:

Peanut butter, low-sugar jam and low-carb bread for sandwiches
Carrot and celery sticks with ranch dressing dip
Melon ball kabobs — Thread orange and green melon balls on skewers. Transport in a flat container.
Low-sugar juice drinks, unflavored milk

And you can induce them to eat the yummy grown-up food.

Simplest of All Low-Carb Picnics

The very simplest no-sandwich picnic of all is as ancient as the Greek hills, and is the same as the “Homer’s Lunch” a bistro in my hometown used to serve: cheese, various olives, pickles (I love cornichons), a dry sausage like summer sausage, and some berries or melons. My family often swings by Trader Joe’s to grab all of this while we’re on the way to an outdoor museum or on a trip. If you live in an area with roadside markets, like lower Michigan, you can find most of these items there as well. My son likes to take along some hardboiled eggs and some smoked herring, but again, in Michigan, upstate New York, and other coastal areas, you may be able to buy smoked fish and homemade cheese and homegrown fruit and vegetables right at the roadside on your way to your destination. Homer would be proud.

Copyright 2013 Tracey Rollison.