The Perfect Summer Picnic

The summer is the best season to have a picnic outside. Here are some of our best suggestions for having a tasty and healthful picnic, such as where to find the ideal location, what to eat, and entertaining activities to do while you're there.

How to Find the Perfect Picnic Spot

There's a useful feature on the recreation gov website that allows you to look for picnic spots around. Just enter your location, indicate that you are looking for picnic and day-use spaces, and look for the ideal place to settle up with your personalized stadium blankets and take in the sunshine. If you have a specific national park in mind, consider visiting the park's website to locate the perfect picnic spot. A lot of national parks include picnic places on their websites. Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, and Yosemite are a few of our favorites.

Healthy Picnic Food

Traditional picnic fare, such as salads drenched in mayonnaise, hot dogs, chips, and cookies, is frequently high in fat and empty calories. Eating a healthy picnic doesn't have to be monotonous! There are lots of ways to still have a tasty picnic without the junk food that goes along with it.

Choose fruits and vegetables that are in season:

Before your picnic, make a fruit salad with in-season fruits in place of cookies and cake. Watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, kiwi, peaches, apricots, and plums are among the in-season fruits at this time of year. We often enjoy bringing a big salad made with seasonal vegetables to our picnics. This time of year, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, and lettuce are great options. To keep the salad vegetables from becoming mushy, only dress the salad when it's time to eat.

Healthier sandwiches:

Choose pita bread, wraps, or whole grain bread for your picnic instead of mayonnaise-filled sandwiches or white bread. Instead of using mayonnaise at all, load up your sandwich with plenty of vegetables, smashed avocado, lean meat, and herbs for seasoning. Drizzling a little olive oil over your sandwich adds taste and healthful fats, but it's not a low-calorie alternative.

Grill the healthy way:

If you wish to grill during your picnic, opt for grilled veggies and lean meats rather than meals that are usually heavy in fat. Lean beef burger patties, grilled entire portobello mushrooms, and vegetable kabobs are a few of our faves. Choose reduced-fat cheeses like mozzarella or Swiss cheese if you're in the mood for a cheeseburger.

Make better snack choices:

Select nutritious snacks like homemade trail mix, almonds, and vegetable crudités and dip. These are a few of our best picks for nutritious snacks.

Avoid soda:

On a hot summer day, it's simple to consume more soda than is healthy. Instead, try one of these nutritious soda recipes! When everyone is ready for a drink, prepare the soda in advance, keep it chilled in a flask, and serve with ice.

Perfect Picnic Activities

It's not difficult to organize fun things to do when having a picnic. When selecting activities, consider the age range of attendees as well as the anticipated number of attendees. Depending on how many people are coming, Tasty Catering has a fantastic list of enjoyable picnic activities divided into different categories. Scavenger hunts, frisbee, relay races, and potato sack races are a few of our favorites. Now that you know all of our advice for the ideal summertime picnic, it's time to organize and plan it.