Recent picnics by the river

Wow, it just amazes me how time flies. The weeks pass so quickly that I just never seem to find time to blog about our weekly picnics. But the weather has been great and we have gone for our picnics each Wednesday. Here’s a brief synopsis:

* Wednesday, August 22 -- I had planned to make Spiral Stromboli, a Quick Cooking recipe, for our picnic. It starts with a refrigerated-dough French Loaf, a great shortcut. However, I’d forgotten that the deli had been out of the sale ham when we shopped, and so we didn’t buy the ham needed for this recipe. I had deli roast beef on hand, though, so I improvised and used that. The original recipe called for mozzarella, and I did use some of that, but I thought Swiss cheese would be really nice with the roast beef, and it was! I’ll try and post the recipe before too long. With this, we had a quick pasta salad and baby carrots. It was a wonderful evening by the river, but cool. I wore a sweater and was not too warm!

* Wednesday, August 29 -- On this night it was a bit warmer by the river -- didn’t need the sweater -- but it was still a beautiful evening. Our menu -- still-warm Beef-Stuffed French Bread (wrapped in foil), potato salad, and good old baby carrots. The beef-stuffed bread is a recipe from one of the early Quick Cooking magazines. It calls for a can of cheddar cheese soup, but I always use my homemade substitute. This time I did it a little differently and was so pleased with the time (and fat grams, and a dish!) that it saved. Rather than making up the substitute in a separate saucepan, I just left out the butter and added the flour to the browned the beef, celery, etc. in the skillet. Then I cooked it until bubbly and added the milk, stirring until thick, and then the other ingredients. This worked out really well. My ground beef was extremely lean, but I still didn’t need to add any butter.

For tonight, I’ve made another easy pasta salad, just something I throw together, and I’m making a meatball pizza sub. Maybe I’ll even get around to blogging about it tomorrow!