Beyond The Basket: 4 Easy Ways To Create Picnic Perfection

For those who enjoy cooking, planning and preparing a picture-perfect picnic is the biggest part of the fun. Use your upcoming picnic as an opportunity to experiment with new recipes, try some new ingredients and discover a few new local stops for stocking up on groceries, cookware and other foodie finds. Here are some ideas:

• With over 50 vendors, Hamilton Farmers’ Market offers one-stop shopping for picnic season’s freshest produce.
• Learn how to build your perfect picnic basket with shop suggestions in Georgetown, Glen Williams, and Milton.
• Can’t-miss foodie favourites in Dundas include Picone Fine Food, The Keeping Room, and Cumbrae’s.

Use a picnic as an opportunity to take a day off from kitchen duties. Order takeout from a restaurant you haven’t enjoyed yet, head to a nearby park and dig in. Try these Hamilton Halton Brant restaurants serving up tasty picnic-approved takeout:

• In Oakville, Sandwich Society offers picnic-perfect sandwiches, using in-house freshly baked bread
• With two locations in Burlington and Hamilton, Radius has a chef-driven, seasonal takeout menu
• Fried chicken is the ultimate picnic main, and Burlington’s The Coop Wicked Chicken makes everything in-house with only the highest quality ingredients. Don’t forget to add on some delicious Deep Fried Deviled Eggs for a retro side with a twist.
• Want more ideas? Explore nine more tasty Hamilton Halton Brant takeout options.

Finding a new destination to enjoy a picnic is an easy way to escape for a few hours. Fortunately, we’re spoiled for choice in Hamilton Halton Brant. For an even longer list of options, skip the places with traditional picnic tables and visit somewhere that will allow you to spread out your picnic blanket anywhere you like!

• Consider adding a touch of outdoor art and explore local displays in the fresh air.
• Or enjoy the scenery from atop the Niagara Escarpment at some of the stops in this itinerary.

Delicious food and stunning scenery are just two-thirds of the equation for creating the perfect picnic. Adding some fun accessories, creature comforts, and outdoor games is what transforms your picnic from a tasty outdoor meal into a whole afternoon or evening of fun. Great shops in Hamilton Halton Brant for sourcing fun little extras include:

• Oakville’s Lakeside Livin’ has adorable paper napkins, cute canvas totes and cooler bags, and outdoor food screens.
• Centro Garden in Burlington is a hub for design, style and inspiration where you’ll find all kinds of terrific picnic trimmings, like beautiful linens for staging your picnic spread to fun games to keep the conversation flowing after your outdoor meal.
• In Paris, Piper and Oak is a Canadian lifestyle boutique with a beautifully curated selection of items. Picnic-perfect picks include lovely cheese cutters, beverage shakers, and straw market baskets.
• Hamilton’s Ottawa Street Shopping District is loaded with inspiration for creating an Instagram-worthy picnic spread like beautiful discount fabrics that will serve as a beautiful picnic blanket and fabulously fun vintage accessories.