A Garden Picnic

Nothing beats saying goodbye to the Winter so I was pretty happy when I bounced out of bed on the first day of March to greet the Spring sunshine. 

What better way to start the new season than with a picnic?

Don't worry I haven't completely lost the plot, I realise it's still a little bit too cold to be heading outside to sit in the grass with a picnic basket, I'm talking about a fantastic alternative at Garden Kitchen.

Garden Kitchen is hidden in a quiet little corner of Eldon Square Shopping Centre and it's one of my favourite places in toon to go for lunch.  

Everything they serve is just delicious and my favourite part of the menu is the picnics, they are amazing value for money and perfect for little piggies like myself and Simon.

The arrival of Spring was the perfect excuse to head out for our first picnic of the year, I was also itching to debut my beautiful new Primark dress.

Whilst trying to decide which of the three yummy picnics to chose from we ordered a jug of homemade lemonade.  We always have it as it's beautifully refreshing and you get a huge jug for only £4.95.

We eventually decided on the Garden Picnic as it had a great mixture of savoury and sweet food, perfect for a hungry lunchtime.  The picnic costs £18.95 and is served on it's own mini picnic table overloaded with food.

How's that for the "wow factor"?  It's quite a lot to take in so let me run through what you get on the picnic.

On our little mini table of goodies we had mini jacket potatoes, a little selection of sandwiches, homemade coleslaw, scotch eggs, baked beans, HP sauce, fresh salad, flapjacks, banana loaf, shortbread biscuits and victoria sponge ... phew!

As you can imagine it's a bit of a dream to photograph and Simon had a few very frustrated minutes watching me snapping away when all he wanted to do was grab all the food.   He did offer to set up a game for my blog - "guess what food was on the picnic table before I ate it?!" .. but I told him no!

The highlights of this feast were the gorgeous salad which had a lovely mustard dressing, the baked beans which were such an experience for me as I've never had homemade baked beans before and the flapjack which was really rich with treacle.

One fun part of having a picnic like this is that inevitably some of your courses do collide.  I did have a little shock when I bit into my roll to discover a tiny piece of victoria sponge had snuck in between the bread.  I enjoyed it though, if you can't eat a cake in a sandwich on a Sunday then when can you?

Garden Kitchen is a fantastic place to cure a rumbling tummy, I can't recommend it highly enough and I'm already looking forward to our next visit.