Picnic Food and a Bike Basket

 We've been eating a ton of strawberries.  They're a favorite around here and we've been able to get some really good ones lately.  The one year old is particularly fond of them.  He brought me one this morning with the leaves still attached and told me to "open it." :)

We had a church picnic this afternoon.  This was a pasta salad I made for our allergic-to-everything one year old.  It consists of rice noodles, peas and carrots, egg-free mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and dill.

I also made a tomato cucumber salad that was a hit with everyone. It's another thing our allergic-to-everything son could have.  I just chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, added a little red onion and parsley, then tossed it with a little olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.  It looked so good that it was practically gone by the time we went though the line.  Thankfully I had grabbed a big serving of it ahead of time for our little one.  

 I also made an attempt at cheesecake brownies, which I really feel like were a flop.  They were too soft, so it was difficult to peel the papers off and have the cupcake hold it's consistency, and all the chocolate chips that had been mixed into the cream cheese mixture just ended up sinking to the bottom and sticking to the paper.  I also didn't think the cake part was all that flavorful.  I'll have to try a different recipe if I ever do these again.  I like the concept, but wasn't thrilled with the results.  I still took them to the picnic though since I had made four dozen of them and there's no way I wanted that many sitting around here :)

When I ordered my bike, I forgot to order a basket for the front.  I'm still going to do that, but in the mean time I needed some way to pack stuff around.  I run to the post office and to stores and want to not have to wear a backpack or carry a bag.  I checked one of the local stores (they specialize in bike stuff) and yikes!  I don't want to spend my life savings on a basket. Ha.  So I came up with a simple solution.

I attached a $3 crate I had sitting around the house to the platform piece on the back of the bike.  Originally I planned to put a baby seat there, but the platform makes it so that won't fit, and I don't want to remove it because it's part of what makes the style of the cruiser.  I looked at saddle-bag type baskets but they have the same problem.  Because of that platform piece, they won't fit.  I do still intend to get a basket for the front of the bike, but for now (and maybe for good) I like the basket on the back ... even if it looks a little odd.

 I attached it with zip ties.  It works okay, but I need quite a few more of them for this to be more stable.  That or I just need to tighten the ones that are on it.  It is fairly stable.  I went to the dollar store and had a full load coming home, including several bottles of gatorade, and it held everything fine.  But it does wobble a bit.  I also saw online that I can get a net type of bungee cord for fairly cheap, and I definitely plan to do that.  Then I won't have to worry about mail blowing out or losing anything when it's windy.

This evening we went to the park with our boys.  The nine year old and I rode our bikes, and the four year old rode his tricycle.  The one year old and Dad walked.

When we got to the park, our four year old just rode around and around the park on his trike.  See the bird in the picture?  We could hear him saying, "Birdie! Wanna ride with me?" and then patting the yellow "trunk" of his bike ;)

We took a few snacks along, including a bag of chocolate covered raisins.  Aren't these just the biggest chocolate covered raisins you've ever seen?

I took my book along but never had time to open it.  I wanted to finish this one by tonight, but it didn't happen.  Trekkerman by Ric Samulski is our library's daytime book club pick for the month (to be discussed next week).  Samulski lives here and used to own the newspaper I first worked for when I moved here back in the mid 90's, though he didn't own it when I worked there.  It's about hiking some of the world's greatest trails, and it's very interesting and humorous - even though I'm not at all into backpacking.  I wasn't too excited about this being the pick since I absolutely hated Wild by Cheryl Strayed, which our club read in February.  But this one is way better than hers.

 The one year old took his cow to the park.  He's all about cows these days and usually has a little cow with him or nearby.

Wild man on a motorcycle...

And another wild man on a dinosaur.

 We live so close to the park that the nine year old ran back to the house for his football and we all played catch.  It was a lot of fun.  Even the one year old got in on the action.

Anyway, we had a pretty fun day!