As we got to know that we would stop in Portugal during our #tkabroad, the one month trip around Europe we did earlier this summer, I knew I wanted to do a beach picnic. It had been something I would dream about for a while and I was so happy we could make it happen! It wasn’t something too difficult to organize, since the closest beach to were my dad and granny live is at a ten minutes walk. After giving it a better thought, dad suggested we would to a beach a little further, on the other side of the river of Mira river’s estuary, since the high cliffs on one side of the beach partly protects it from the sometimes quite strong ocean wind . We brought with us an old big coverlet, were we would sit, a beach umbrella and of course food. With granny we made a rice salad, which worked out so well. I recommended it as a take away food, since it’s so good, versatile, usually it is liked by everyone, it feels your stomach well and still it doesn’t make you feel heavy as a stuffed bread would.
In Vila Nova de Milfontes, as I’m sure in so many other places in Portugal, they would have a street market every other week and there we found the most delicious homemade cheeses. I fell in love with the goat and sheep ones especially, so we brought them with to the picnic as well as some cold cuts.
The dessert consisted of stuffed peaches, a typical Piedmontese dessert that granny masters (and that she passed on to me! I should publish the recipe here now that I think about it.. They are insanely good and quite fast to make!). Believe me or not, but in Portugal it seems that they don’t sell cocoa powder. We just found powdered chocolate or something like that, way lighter in color that the real cocoa powder. Hence, the color of these peaches is different than what they are supposed to be, but fear not! The taste was delicious anyways, so delicious that Klaus ate entire halves in a single mouthful, making granny one of the happiest.
I cherish dearly the memory of that day at the beach. It was so lovely to be there with some of the people most dear to me in the world, having a nice time, talking, slicing cheese and savoring it with some wine, all this surrounded by astounding nature.
The board is from the Portuguese wooden kitchenware brand Gradirripas. Find out more about them here:
The ceramics featured in this post are from Círculo Ceramics. I had the pleasure of meeting Margarida, the woman behind this ceramics brand, and she is such a talented person! I love the fact that her ceramics are rustic, irregular, robust and simply elegant. They are imperfect and that is precisely the point, because beauty doesn’t have to mean perfection. She created this collection with grey/blue hues that I think fits so perfectly with the whole beach theme. Find her products here:
