Tanglewood Music Festival is in Lenox, Massachusetts. It is celebrating its 75th year. Tonight was opening night with an all Beethoven program performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. While we’ve sat in the shed before, we opted to sit out on the lawn tonight to enjoy our picnic snacks.
We had already had dinner earlier in the evening at a party we were at. We wanted to bring a little picnic with us and include some fun snacks that we could enjoy. We started with five spice roasted pecans.
To begin we gathered our ingredients.
1/4 cup brown sugar
3T Five Spice (or more depending on your taste)
a pinch of Kosher salt
4 Tablespoons of butter
1lb. of pecans
Lightly toast the pecans for about four minutes. Add the butter and allow to melt coating the pecans.
Add the five spice and salt. Toss the nuts in the spices.
Add the brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of water and coat the nuts.
When they are covered in sauce remove mixture from the heat and carefully layer the pecans on a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Sprinkle on salts of your choice- we used lava salt as well as Kosher salt.
The nuts should then cool completely before being stored.
They were a simple and easy snack and were one of three we made tonight to make our picnic just a little bit more special.
The second snack we made included cherries which had been halved skewed with a little chunk of mozzarella and a roll of basil. The cherry was a great alternative to the tomato and added a sweetness that was quite refreshing.
We also made a honey-mustard sausage. We took one of our sausages (see previous blog) and cut it into chunks. We cooked it until it browned on both sides.
We then added honey and mustard (whole grain or Dijon) and a spash of water.
This mixture cooked until the honey mixture reduced greatly and was bubbling.
The sausages were sweet and tangy and a great addition to our picnic basket!
Our final creation was a yummy surprise. We love curry. We also love goats cheese. This was simple. We took goats cheese, sour cream, chives, parsley, curry and turmeric and blended it until smooth. We let this mixture sit for about four hours to absorb all the flavors and then simply spread it on bread and topped it with bacon and parsley.
The curry flavor really came through and was complimented with the tang of the goats cheese.
We didn’t make any desserts to bring but rather found some lovely little cookies that were flavored with pomegranate and lime. They were crispy and thin and just delightful to bite into!
People can get pretty elaborate at Tanglewood. Some of the picnics we saw tonight included tables, flowers, candelabras and chairs! We were happy with our little blanket and candles but did feel a bit inadequate! Tanglewood is a great outing. We highly suggest it if you are in The Berkshires and suggest the lawn seats as it is such a fun experience.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.