Max Halley - Maxs Picnic Book An Ode to the Art of Eating Outdoors, from the Authors of Maxs Sandwich Book.

This is not a cookbook. It is a book about picnics.

For Ned, Sheila and Lydia, forever and always.

Originally a good excuse for a few drinks outdoors, the picnic has since been ripped from its roots, chewed up, spat out and then stamped to death by art, literature, movies and cynical branding. Instead of being fun and achievably delicious, the picnic has become chintzy and dunked in rose-tinted, wasp-attracting goo. Enid Blyton-esque abominations such as homemade ginger beer, bunting and sweaters for goalposts have become part of the collective consciences perception of the thing.

Even feeling as I do, I find myself accidentally complicit in the picnics great identity crisis of the early twenty-first century. Closing my eyes and imagining one, I cant help but be in a stately homes garden where vivid green trees and verdant hedgerows abound. The sun is shining, blankets are spread everywhere and people in peach-coloured clothing are saying things like Scrum-diddlyumptious! and These cucumber sandwiches are simply sensational.

As a species we have been picnicking since we came out of the slime. A little light lunch next to the dead Woolly Mammoth? Picnic. Some scraps pinched from outside the neighbours cave? Picnic. Lunch on the train or at your desk? Picnic. Dinner in the car park of a motorway service station at 1 a.m.? PICNIC GODAMMIT!

By the eighteenth century, the pique-nique, taking its name from the gluttonous character in a bawdy French satire of 1649, had become an (indoor) jolly, where guests brought their own culinary contributions. In 1748 a young Lord Chesterfield found himself partying in a garden somewhere outside Leipzig. He wrote to his father (Earl Chesterfield, he of the sofa) and described the days events as a picnic, coining the term in English.

The picnic cantered through culture at such pace that by 1801, a Pic Nic Society had been founded in Londons Fitzrovia. Legendarily raucous, their meetings were a mash up of lunch, dinner, serious prolonged heavy drinking and shonky amateur dramatics. The societys rulebook specified that all attendees arrive at the venue with one item of food, and six bottles of wine.

The Societys star burned bright, but brief and in 1802, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a greedy, influential playwright and the owner of the Drury Lane Theatre, worried that the groups antics were eating into his market share and had the authorities shut them down.

I am telling you this, not to furnish you with historical dullness, but to remind you that the picnic hasnt always been the Sound of Music bullsh!t weknow it as today. When I think of what the poor picnic has become, I want to run for the hills, hills which are alive not with the sound of music, but the sound of screaming.

This most malleable and moveable of feasts, the picnic, is for us all, the many not the few and together, we must take it back. We must crush the marketeers who sell us unnecessary wicker baskets and Wind in the Willows fantasies. When we see a pickled egg in a bag of crisps with some of the pubs Tabasco tipped in it, PICNIC! we shall cry. When we see a Thermos flask of scrambled eggs whipped out on a train? PICNIC! we shall roar again with our arms in the air.

There does not have to be fizzy pop, Scotch eggs, sausage rolls and an allegedly innovative approach to hummus for a picnic to be a picnic. You should be able to sit at your desk at work, smash your way through a flask of hot, tinned beef consomm with a packet of store-bought ravioli tipped in it, and think of yourself quite rightly, as a picnicker of great repute.

If this book achieves its goal, next time youre in town having some fast food, youll remember theres a miniature bottle of whisky in your bag and order some pudding accordingly: A largevanilla milkshake and a double espresso, please. You will sling the coffee and the miniature into the milkshake, stir it all about and walk down the street, tripping the light fantastic, slurping your Irish coffee and shouting out loud for all to hear: My name is ...! And I am PICNICKING LIKE A BOSS!

The following sixteen fictional picnic stories and accompanying menus are, both in content and spirit, utterly fantastical. Their threads metaphorically demonstrate the ways in which we can rethink what the picnic really is, while paying homage to our real (and imaginary) heroes.

So, as a disclaimer, I would like to mostly quote the great Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park:

All characters and events in this book, even those based on real people and occasions, are entirely fictitious. It is full of coarse language, casual sex and drug references, and many really bad jokes. As a result of these things, we recommend it should not be read by anyone.

Life is full of opportunities for deliciousness.
Picnic like a boss!

Venerate, dont emulate thats how my mum told me to handle rogues and my lunatic heroes. Whatever the inspiration, we must always remember to picnic with our own style and panache. To feel free consuming whatever we want, wherever we like, be that a bottle of Chivas Regal and a packet of Dunhill on a park bench, or a forkful of quiche on a nice gingham blanket.

I very much hope you are familiar with todays host. Much was made, mostly by him, of Hunter S. Thompsons love of drugs, alcohol and gun-based violence. Behind the bravado, though, was one of the most brilliant, brutal, sabre-like minds of his generation. His suspicion and understanding, or as he put it, fear and loathing, of Americas political establishment gave him an ability to see through the fog and the lies, to look plainly and with terrifying accuracy at the misery, horror and evil cantering through the sky towards him, dressed up as politics. As for Hunters imaginary picnic companion, we have arguably the most beloved Mary of all, Mary Berry. For the unanointed, she is Britains Grande Dame de Demerara, our Queens Counsel of Sugar and Butter and in (vanilla) essence, a British Martha Stewart or Maggie Beer.

MENU

All-day Breakfast Quiche

Pickled Eggs

Packet of Crisps and Available Condiments

A Bottle of Chivas Regal

Ros wine

At least 20 Dunhills