It's Not About The Food

So, I feel like I have to cheat a little on this challenge as I do not have an iconic food for summer. What I do have is a food group, well, more what the food group signifies and how that signifies summer to me.

As the title says, for me it is not about eating a particular food, but about where you eat it and who you eat it with. All the food choices that make summer in my opinion can be grouped up into one single word. Picnic.

That happy feeling of summer truly hits home when I have spent what seems like an hour flicking out a blanket across the grass, trying to get it all smooth and fully stretched out, only to then flop on it and crease it all up. I then take out the little parcels of tin foil containing barely passible sandwiches filled with whatever I could find at the local shop and lay them down next to the variety of rubbish things to pick at such as mini pork pies that no one wants to eat when it is roasting in the sun.

Intricately taking the time to display everything in an artistic fashion as if I am Michelangelo, only to then realise I forgot the cupcakes. Of course, I forgot the cupcakes, the one thing the kids specifically asked for before I went shopping. I can almost hear their moans as they roll their eyes in an exaggerated fashion before they go back off to play and forget cupcakes even existed.

Then it comes down to the drinks. Bottles of fizzy pop that are close to boiling point and a random none resealable can that one of the kids, knowing full well they won’t drink it all, still picked it just to be awkward and make it difficult for me to bring back home.

Content with my miniature feast, I look around to see the love of my life (whose addiction to the sun would put a drug addict the shame) already lying down soaking up more heat than a roast chicken. Another glance and I can see my children, impervious to the barrage of sweltering rays as they dart around the field acting out whatever random scene they have concocted in their amazing imagination.

To sit down at a table and eat this abomination of a meal at any other time would almost bring tears of despair to my eyes. Imagine being in the freezing cold of winter, the chill soaking deep into the bones as snow falls gracefully around you and all you have to eat is a partially stale sandwich and a sweating mini pork pie. It just wouldn’t work.

But now is different, now I take a sip of my warm flat pop, pick up a dodgy sandwich, take a bite and smile because this is summer, it is warmth, it is happiness and it is glorious as it doesn’t matter what I am eating, it matters who I am with and nothing can beat the fun and enjoyment of a picnic.

As you can see from the pictures, picnics are not limited to just fields. When summer rears its beautiful head from behind the rainy clouds of spring, any spot becomes a picnic spot and no food is safe from being including in my dastardly meal plan.

Now summer is here, I hope you all have an amazing time soaking up the sun and eating terrible food that you would not have at any other time but you cannot help but enjoy. Oh, and don't forget the cupcakes.