Healthy & Covid-Safe Picnic Food Ideas From A Dietitian
As we come out of lockdown, your loved ones are likely experiencing varying degrees of hesistancy and health anxiety. I’ve written below some picnic ideas to keep us all as connected and safe as possible.
The secret to a covid-safe picnic: packing individual serves of foods to minimise sharing of utenstils, avoiding temperature-sensitive foods and bringing a ton of hand sanitiser.
To ensure food safety, we want to prevent cross contamination by keeping meats separate to fresh produce, be avoiding. Creamy sauces, soft cheese, pates, dips and processed meats are often temperature and time sensitive. Unless you plan on eating the food immediately and throwing out leftovers- give the options below a shot.
1. Yoghurt & Fruit Parfaits in reusable jars
These are more than just aesthetically pleasing, they’re environmentally friendly! You can reuse all your pasta sauce jars and make just enough so that you don’t have to throw out the leftovers afterwards. As yoghurt is very temperature-sensitive, it’s unsafe to bring back home and eat (even if you refrigerate it afterwards). I would recommend bringing it in an esky or lunchbox with an iceblock.
Layer the jars with yoghurt, fruit, and pumpkin and sunflower seeds for added crunch!
2. Tofu & Vegetable Skewers
The wonderful thing about vegetarian dishes – food safety is a lot less complicated! Not to mention, you’re reducing your carbon footprint and increasing your fibre intake. Alternate chopped up veggies and satay tofu on a wooden stick and pop them in the oven, air-fryer or on the grill for a meat-free lunch option! For a more nutty taste, you can swap out tofu for tempeh.
These are delicious warm so heat them up before you go and wrap tight in aluminium foil.
3. Mini Frittatas or Mini Picnic Pizza
Grab and go mini frittatas are not only convenient for when you’ve woken up late for work. They are a crowd favourite for adults and little ones.
If you have multiple dietary requirements to cater for, mini picnic pizzas are one way to personalise for every dietary requirement.
An easy short cut to rolling your own dough is using english muffins or wholemeal wraps as a base for thin crust pizzas.
4. Chocolate dipped strawberries and bananas
Can’t cook but still want to contribute to the picnic? Dipping fruit in melted chocolate and sprinkling with nuts is a sure-fire way to provide the perfect bite-sized treat.
5. Pasta Salad
Ditch the potato salad that is going to be unsafe to eat after a few hours in the summer sun and replace with a high fibre, vegetarian pasta salad! My favourite is a Meditteranean-style pasta that looks like and tastes like summer, by using vibrant red, yellows and greens. I love to include chickpeas, raw capsicum, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion and kalamata olives drizzled with italian vinaigrette.
