Picnics are important – especially to homeschoolers – you can go to interesting places, not spend a fortune on cafes (Unless you want to – and can eat what they serve. Surprisingly, there are some things I can eat when we go out, and Dan usually buys one for me.) It lowers the price of museums and trips considerably when you have a picnic ready to go – but it does need to be special, because the kids can smell cookies and coffee just as much as you can.
Of course, the other thing that brings museums and such into budget territory is library passes. Support your local library, and check out if they have bought museum passes folks!
Here’s what I’ve got so far for gf picnic lunches:
Annie’s Corn and Black Bean salad – adding the avacado and mango at the picnic table so they don’t get mushy in the car. (I like some cheese in it too.) This is usually called Sand Salad in my family, to reference a beach day when M’s digging got into my salad bowl, and we hadn’t packed anything else to eat.
Bierocks baked ahead in the shape of turnovers, using the oil dough from the gf chapter in
Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.
The garbanzo/orange salad from Poor Girl Gourmet, using well rinsed quinoa instead of Israeli couscous.
Hummus with cheese, crackers, rice cakes and veggies.
All of these picnics have been well received, especially if there are cookies or brownies and apples in the picnic basket too. Cookies and brownies being the easiest thing to bake gf, and the ones I worried about the most, next to to pizza dough.
Speaking of which, the new Cook’s Illustrated pizza dough is excellent (if a bit fussy), but my family likes the dough I use for Bierocks just as well, and it’s much easier.