Picnic Breakfast

This morning Robert and I had a picnic breakfast in our yard.  As much as I love picnics, I can't believe I had never thought to do this.  Credit for the idea goes to my friend Divya Tate. Divya, who was on my RAAM team crew, is head of Audax India Randonneurs.  She coordinated a group of randonneurs from India who participated in this year's Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP) 1200-km brevet, the famous, epic randonneuring event held every four years. Divya and her rando friends had a breakfast picnic while they were in France last month, which sounded totally cool to me.

Divya told me that I had to follow their example and have wine at my breakfast picnic.  That would have been groovy with me, but I went with the classic American morning cocktail, the Bloody Mary.  I've tried tinkering with my own mix recipe, but I haven't been able to come up with anything better than Mr. and Mrs. T Bold & Spicy Bloody Mary Mix.  Just mix it with vodka.  I always garnish Robert's and my Bloody Marys with some fancy olives, like these that are stuffed with garlic.  Today I added some hot pickled okra to mine, too.  Robert isn't a fan of pickled okra like I am, so he just got olives:

The yogurt and granola parfaits didn't go as planned.  After years of making a particular granola recipe, Robert recently informed me that he really doesn't like it because it's too sweet.  Therefore, I tried a new recipe.  I think it would have been just what Robert likes except that I burned it!  I cooked it for the length of time that the recipe called for, but it was too long.  I should have kept a closer eye on it since it was my first time making it.  I hated having to throw it out, but at least my parfaits weren't totally doomed.  We happened to have some store-bought granola, which I layered with plain Greek yogurt in the parfaits:

I'll try the new granola recipe again soon, reducing the oven temperature and possibly cooking it less time.

Another new recipe was frittata muffins.  They were just what they sound like: mini frittatas cooked in a muffin tin.  I used fresh eggs from our chickens and added sauteed bell peppers and onions - delicious!

We also had pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants), which were specifically PBP-inspired. The last few issues of American Randonneur magazine have had a number of articles about PBP.  I remembered reading one that mentioned that pain au chocolat is good bike food that's easy to find at the PBP controls.  A Google search yielded an easy recipe that utilizes frozen puff pastry.  I used pieces of dark chocolate and brushed the pastries with an egg wash before baking.  Oui!

The rest of the menu included grapes and coffee for Robert and Earl Grey tea for me.  I felt extravagant having two cups of tea, but this was quite an auspicious occasion.

I spread out an old bedspread on the grass and brought out our well-used picnic basket.  We received the picnic basket as a wedding gift, and we are still enjoying using it after all these years.  What a great gift!

We couldn't have had a more beautiful morning for our picnic.  The temperature was in the 70s, not a cloud was in the sky, and birds and insects serenaded us from the trees still green with summer.  We even had a visitor to our picnic:

Maybe I can get closer to the food from this side.