Picnic. That magic word invokes countless children's books (mostly idyllic Enid Blytons and E. Nesbits) where the children pack a few bottles of ginger ale and ham sandwiches (I remember reading Hollow Tree House mainly for the food descriptions) and traipse off into the woods. And eat on a mossy bank or a meadow. Even at that age I knew that this would never work out in a tropical climate. No sun? No prickly grass? No sweat? And most of all, no ANTS?? I suppressed a little sigh and continued to draw wistful pictures of picnics that forever featured red and white checked sheets, brown woven picnic baskets, picturesque but completely impractical bunches of flowers, glass bottles of lemonade, and sandwiches. And then I got older and my fascination with picnics revived over beautiful Pins of cheese boards, fresh fruits, and cold meat trays with fan-shaped spreads of ham slices in all different shades of earthy red and pale pinks, marbled with white fat spots. Recently I decided that yes, I would have a picnic, fulfilling all my childhood fantasies; I would find a way to translate them into my reality of hot, humid tropical weather. AND I wouldn't spend a bomb either. A dear friend was coming to Singapore for a visit and it was the perfect opportunity. You need picnickers who are, if not outdoor people, at least sporting. Otherwise you have a bunch of unhappy people who are otherwise perfectly agreeable in air conditioned environments; examining themselves for mosquito bites, complaining about the sun, ostentatiously wiping away sweat, and constantly checking for ants or stray insects. It rather spoils the mood. My Project Tropical Picnic took off without a very promising start. I had my heart set on a legit wooden/woven picnic basket with a hinged lid. Picnic baskets, however, are apparently luxury items in Singapore. The prices on Carousell horrified me and I retired wondering if they sold picnic baskets alongside gold bars and human organs on the black market. Then at the last moment I realized that in my very own kitchen there was a beautiful rush basket with wooden handles, which had held floor mats for the past several years, and which--minus the hinged lid--was a perfect match. I guess that would have been too much to ask. So yes, I unearthed all the floor mats (as well as a family of earwigs) and gave the basket a thorough clean. Talk about being blind to the beauty of everyday things. I love having my eyes opened to appreciate things already around me. Picnic basket--check! Food-wise, I knew I wouldn't have any fancy cheese boards or smorgasbords due to budget constraints; but that wasn't dampening me. I couldn't resist some figs which were on sale; strawberries and blueberries; sweet corn; salad; cherry tomatoes; one modest pack of plain ham; fizzy apple juice; fresh mint, panini and crabsticks (surely one of the most unexpected pairings ever) completed my shopping list. And one bag of chips. That gave me ingredients for hearty sandwiches and a jumbo salad-plus-plus, as I like to call salad that isn't just green leaves. We all know what Caesar salads' most important ingredients are. Not the salad itself, for a fact. I differentiate salads thus because in my home we eat salad almost every other day--salad, however, that is legit salad--no dressing--no croutons--definitely no bacon bits, goat cheese morsels, or hard-boiled egg pieces. Rabbit food, some of my friends say. But you get used to it. But in comparison to the "salads" you get outside, you'll understand why those are "plus-plus" to me. Glass bottles would have been beautiful but heavy and impractically fragile; I resigned myself to plastic bottles. Thankfully my family had drank enough herbal tea from the same shop to have four matching bottles with red caps that weren't aesthetically unpleasant. I chopped up the strawberries and some lemon slices, crushed some mint, and filled the whole bottle with fizzy apple juice to let it steep. I indulged myself in fulfilling another childhood dream and stuck a cocktail parasol in each bottle, for no apparent reason (I tried to explain them as a way to keep insects out of your drink, but it soon became obvious that they were more aesthetic than useful.) My cup of joy was complete when I found some little sandwich flags my Dutch cousins had given a while ago. I mean, aren't sandwich flags the epitome of fancy teas? You know you're living the high life when you're served sandwiches with little flags on top. Even if the Dutch flag was somewhat out of place on top of panini bread with Singapore NTUC ham, Spanish baby spinach, figs from Turkey, and chips from Thailand. Very global. In passing: chips inside sandwiches, and together with salad, are actually really nice. But perhaps you know that already. After all, under what circumstances are they ever not nice? For dessert, I decided to work within the tropical climate and made pineapple juice ice lollies. This was a good decision as it turned out. When we set out, we were armed with umbrellas as well as huge sunhats (I was prepared for the worst of tropical weather; terrific rainstorms or scorching sun.) As it turned out, the weather was a little on the warm side, but overall cloudy and pleasant. Finding a picnic spot in urban Singapore without going to the parks or beach to fight it out with the other 5.5 million would-be picnickers and campers was challenging. Here we are like pilgrims on a quest for a picnic spot, lugging our massive picnic basket and sun hats, looking very out of place in the midst of a Singapore HDB estate. In the end I optimistically led the charge up a grassy hill towards a small clearing under some trees. From the foot of the hill, it looked ideal--slightly removed from the traffic and stray joggers, shaded under all those trees. There was the lurking possibility of a monkey visit, not quite as much breeze as we hoped for, a few more bumps underneath our picnic mat than we would have liked, and one ant attack where we had to rescue our food, but otherwise it was quite satisfactory. By the time we reached the dessert course the cold ice lollies were clearly a better dessert choice than cake or cookies. Halfway through an ice lolly the wind always seems to return, and suddenly you're much more comfortable than you were five minutes ago. That's the magic of ice cream. And yes, that bunch of flowers in the picnic basket is there just because. Though they look orange here, they were really the prettiest shade of cream and milk tea, and cost only a dollar. Come on. How often does one go on a picnic, after all. Let's have the flowers just because we all know those illustrations of picnics in storybooks that we cut our teeth on always have flowers somewhere or other. And since our tropical climate gives us every possible shade of green but hardly any wild flowers, a very different sort of beauty. Observe the random banana tree in the background of this photo, for instance. How more tropical can you get. According to Pinterest I should have lugged a whole pineapple as well for the effect, and sun glasses, for a truly tropical picnic vibe. It was warm, humid, there were ants, (all three of which are inevitable) there were a few people who stared at us from the windows of their apartment, and I was more anxious about stray monkeys appearing than I would have liked to be, but I was happy. Even as I strategized what would be the best response (throw the food at the monkeys? pack up and run? eat everything up at top speed?) while munching on my panini. After all, I was living out my childhood fantasy, without bursting a hole in my wallet or having to take a flight to a cooler climate; there was a cocktail parasol in my drink, and I was sitting on a legit red and white checked sheet (a flimsy plastic disposable, granted, but still red and white checked. Some things gets engrained on your memory.) Most of all, creating a little picturesque space of happiness for people I loved, out of the ordinary (you're not going to catch me going on a picnic every weekend) yet out from the ordinary--every single thing at that picnic was something I could get again, tomorrow, today, without having to spend a lot or travel outside of my neighbourhood. Except friends. Yes. Those are special. |
the process of appreciating life
|