Summer Picnic Club 2010!

Ever since I read this post, and a week or so later, this one (look at that amazing photo!), I have had summer picnics on the brain.  Good food + outdoors + friends, old and new = totally enamored.

And so I took to the Internets to research.  Of course.  I had to start with finding the origins of the picnic.  Wikipedia's definition is longer, but here's a shorter one that I liked:

The word picnic traces to the 1692 edition of a French book, where it was used to describe a group of people dining in a restaurant who brought their own wine. For a long time a picnic meant a meal that everyone contributed something to, similar to a potluck. Sometime during the Middle Ages, picnics became the enjoyable outdoor meals that we know of today. In the early 19th century in London, the Picnic Society was formed by a group of fashionable people for purposes of entertainment.

Then I looked into what others have done, and how.  The Tokyo Picnic Club was a great find -- but maybe that's because I have a slight bent towards Japanese aesthetics. (^o^)  I plan on incorporating their 15 rules into my own iteration. 

And, keeping rules 7, 8, and 9 in mind, what's a picnic without food?  Martha and The Kitchn have been my go-to's, from how to plan a picnic to picnic knives to picnic recipes.   Pressed sandwiches, anyone?  See Heart of Light's version here.  Or how about a salad in a jar?  Lots of new recipes to try out -- good practice for packing work lunches, too!

I've got dates and at least the first location in mind but am still overthinking the wording -- ironic especially because I want this to be an easy project -- and hope to get my invitations out to friends by early June.  That's next week.  Geez.

Summer Picnic Club 2010 is all I think about whenever I pass by a park, particulary these days, as they are verdant and abloom.  I have talked it all up among some close friends, and DC is totally on board.  So at the very least, there will be a few people -- I hope!  Onwards with the planning!