With the summer days getting shorter and Kathryn’s very long student’s holiday coming to the end, we were running out of time to get this challenge completed. We originally set aside last Sunday but weather forecasts did not look good. We rescheduled for this weekend and decided on the Friday. At least if the day hadn’t been good, we had three more days to choose as it was a long bank holiday weekend.
I kept an eye on the forecast and was very hopeful. The weather has certainly been beautiful all week on the south coast and the weather forecast was showing a big yellow blob for Friday. I now had to think about the food I was going to take. Kathryn is now a very health conscious eater so I wanted to incorporate some of this in too. I did have a desire to make some sausage rolls though which I know weren’t that healthy but would be an achievement for me to make. Updating my shopping order on Thursday evening meant I had to abandon that idea as there wasn’t any sausage meat but went for healthy mustard and honey sausages instead, one of our favourites. In the end, I went with quite a 70’s theme and put everything onto cocktail sticks. Friday morning was spent in the kitchen cooking sausages and balsamic chicken strips (Rosemary Conley recipe so healthy). I also put together my childhood favourite, cheese and pineapple. Does that count as being healthy because it has fruit and I used low fat cheese – I can hope!
Whilst putting in my shopping order, I found a recipe for Jaffa Cakes by Mary Berry from the latest Great British Bake Off episode (must catch up with that). I thought they looked quite fun to do so thought they would be perfect for our picnic. I have to say that the recipe lied – it said the only tricky part was getting the chocolate to look perfect – I had trouble getting the jelly to dissolve. As a child, my mum often made us jelly and she didn’t have this problem. Anyway 10 minutes later, I finally put it in the tin for it to set and made the base of the cakes. They were quick and easy to make and putting them together was quite fun and a bit messy but the result was good. I had made jaffa cakes!



I packed up the picnic and walked to the beach to meet Kathryn for our picnic. She added some beautiful ham and juicy sweet strawberries to the haul.
It was the perfect weather and we found the perfect spot looking over to the Isle of Wight to enjoy the food.
A very good challenge to tick off.