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Food and Drink

Kick off a summer of love

Long summer days. Sultry summer nights. What's summer, if not romantic? And with newly-weds Kate and Will's high-flying visit still in full swing, at least some of Canada is basking in the power of love.

So why not spread the lightheartedness and plan the summer event that comes with a full pedigree of pleasure, good cheer and, if you do it right, good simple food. Plan a jolly good picnic!

When it comes to fun and entertainment value, picnics have changed in form and function but stood the test of time - almost. These days as I sit on my picnic blanket and gaze out over parks and beaches, I think that way too many of us have forgotten the art of picnics. Either that or we're too busy shopping and texting.

While pinning down the history of picnicking is about as elusive as pinning down Puck and his magic potions in Midsummer Night's Dream, no doubt the concept originated in France. We can track the origins of "picnic" to "piquenique," probably a playful reduplication stemming from the French "piquer" meaning "to pick."

So even the term "picnic" stems from fun, something like other reduplications we use playfully, like "riff-raff," "helter-skelter" and even "hip hop."

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary states that "picnic" historically described "an entertainment" where each person brought a dish of something or other to contribute to the common whole. These "entertainments" were often held indoors.

Sounds more like what we'd think of today as potluck, which in itself is a strange enough term when you think about it. Nonetheless, both terms allude to the idea of "picking" something that will add to a whole bigger than the sum of its parts. Then you get to pick again when it comes time to eat. If you're lucky both times, your choice will satisfy at least most appetites.

Sure, you could take some cold crispy-fried chicken, a sinfully rich potato salad or a whopper of a fragrant, juicy melon on its own and have a pretty decent time of it. But put them all together under a shady tree on a sky-blue, diamond afternoon and you've got a sensual, sensational feast. Add a few good companions - ideally everyone contributes something - et voilà , some real fun.

This may well have been what ...Edourd Manet had in mind when he painted his sumptuous and best-known painting, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe , or Luncheon on the Grass, as it translates.

It features a gorgeously natural, nude woman front and centre, sitting in polite repose while in conversation with two dapperly clad men in a shady glen. The scatterings of a picnic - a wicker basket, bread, some fruit and perhaps brioche - are scattered beside her amidst crumpled blue linens, which could be her clothing, picnic tablecloth, or both. Above the luncheon group, a second, semi-nude woman dabbling in a stream hovers like an apparition.

We'll never know whether the controversial painting was a well-executed artistic exercise of placing figures and still life in landscape, as ...Emile Zola argued; a social critique on the prostitution that ran rife in the Bois de Boulange near Paris; or simply Manet's provocation of the Parisian art world (it was part of the Salon des Refusés of 1863). I prefer to think of it as simply a celebration of picnicking pleasures.

By comparison, if you delve into the history of picnicking in Canada, it can come across as a horse of a different colour.

Dorothy Duncan in her new book, Feasting and Fasting, Canada's Heritage Celebrations , describes our national picnicking pastimes as possibly arising from "our Canadian ancestors' need to cook over open fires, to eat on the move [drive-throughs, anyone?], and to organize large group meals out of doors at the time of harvest, for work bees of all kinds and for the celebration of special occasions."

She also allows for the power of social influence in popularizing picnics, noting that Elizabeth Simcoe, wife of the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, "continually dined and entertained 'on the pretty green bank, in an arbour of oak bows, by the fall' and other outdoor locations."

One early picnicker in Upper Canada noted an outdoors "pleasure-party" feast in the late summer of 1800 along the Humber River featuring a "piece of Cold Roast Beef, Cold ham, cold chicken and hot stewed Wild Ducks."

Picnics were also organized for family reunions, as part of celebrations like parades and regattas, and to commemorate holidays like Canada Day.

By the early 20 th century, companies started organizing summer picnics for employees and their families. H. J. Heinz company reps described these as a "way to help employees escape the rigours of the work week."

And escape we did! Some of my favourite summer "kid" memories were the raucous summer picnics thrown by the now-defunct North American industrial wholesaler, Marshall-Wells, where my dad worked half his life. Hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, pop, chocolate bars, watermelons and the wildly popular peanut scramble and gunny sack races were the order of the day. Everyone, at least from a kid's perspective, had an uproariously good time.

Political parties got involved, too. Back to Upper Canada, centre of last week's festivities, and we find extravagant affairs in the late 1800s. One such event, described in Feasting and Fasting , had the then-Conservative Party hosting a picnic for three or four hundred people, only fifty of whom were women, poor things.

Held in a beautiful grove of elms, picnickers were treated to long tables laden with turkeys, chickens, geese, roast ducks with wild rice stuffing, garnished tongues, aspic harms, pigeon pastries and giblet pies; all kinds of fresh fruit, loaves and cakes; and an impressive array of desserts, from Huronia maple layer cakes to charlotte russe and shoo-fly pie.

Picture this long before the days of plastic forks and paper plates, when social decorum demanded proper silverware, china, glassware and table linens, too.

You don't have to go to such huge efforts to create a lighthearted picnic that can transport you beyond the rigours and routine of the daily grind.

A few good companions, and a few simple dishes (a bean salad? some quarter-inch-thick slices of salami grilled on the bar-b the night before?) along with a couple of imaginative flourishes (a real tablecloth, or glasses instead of plastic ones) and you're set for the summer of love.

 

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who always brings a 40-year-old checkered tablecloth, complete with a historical record of stains, to picnics.