Keep Cool Out-of-Doors

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 256, 19 January 1928, Page 8

Keep Cool Out-of-Doors

Hints on Picnicking at the Beach

Picnics on the beach are a delightful feature of the seaside holiday. Children enjoy them tremendously. In their view any meal that takes them away from their beloved beach is a waste of time, therefore they are thoroughly happy when lunch or tea is brought down to the sards to a sheltered spot among the rocks or to the family tent on the beaeh. Their elders love the informality of a beach picnic, too, and they seldom demur when the children say ‘‘Let's have tea on the beach to-day.” If one has a small and not very convenient shelter, or perhaps just a bathing tent on the bec-h, it is better to make all the preparations at home and carry a picnic basket down w iih one to the beach. The ever-usvful thermos flask can be used for tea or coffee. Two things should always oe remembered with regard to thermos flasks; always scald the cork as well as the flask after using, and never add milk to tea in the flask. If mill, is added the flavour of the tea -.s curiously spoiled. Bathing, paddling and digging, even just lazing on the sands in the fresh sea air, all increase one’s appetite, so picnic fare for the beach should be plentiful and nourishing as we’l as dainty. The children’s capacity for sandwiches or patties at lunch -hould not be under-estimated, and plenty of these, filled with meat, cheese or eggs, should be provided. Salad should accompany sandwiches of the varieties mentioned; or delicious saod wiches can be made with combinations of lettuce, cress, cucumber, tomatoes and eggs, meat or cream cheese. Fresh fruit is the simplest and nicest sweet for the beach lunch. A delightful way of preparing fresh currants, raspberries or loganberries is to pick them carefully, place them in the bowl or dish in which they w ill be served, and cover with castor sugar. Shake the bowl so that the sugar

mingles with the fruit, and let it stand for several hours. If this is done in the early morning there should be plenty of juice in the bowl by lunch time. With cream or withoht, the flavour of the fresh fruit is preferable to that which has been stewed. Wifh fresh fruit, cake or biscuits can be served, or little fingers of plain short pastry. Short pastry is nourishing. and, when not too rich, is a quite suitable sweet for children Small fruit pasties are a favourable sweet for the picnic lunch, and fruit jellies set in cups tjhat are not too fragile are also appetising. After bathing, a hot drink is always desirable, so if the bathing hour is just before lunch, provide h“t coffee, or, for the children, cocoa or chocolate.