Summer is a-coming, which means it's time to fire up the barbecue and head outdoors, right?
Things you only know if you hate eating al fresco
Well, despite what the season is telling you, or the seemingly hardwired desire to go cook and eat in the great oudoors (blame those lingering caveman genes), don't be fooled.
Al fresco dining can be an utter nightmare…
It always sounds like such a good idea. In your head the trestle table is going to look so lovely, and everyone is going to behave so beautifully. You spend ages rigging up fairy lights and white bunting, hauling candles and table cloths outside, only for your family to eat in 10 minutes flat and then request to go straight back inside to watch telly. All that time turning your garden into an interior magazine's vision, for nothing.
Wasps. Ants. Sea gulls. Mosquitoes. Dogs begging under the table for scraps. Opting for dinner outside is tantamount to asking nature to directly come and ruin your meal, either via stealing half your food, or dive bombing the table. Why do this to yourselves?
So you actively want to cook everything, and then instead of sliding it straight over to the dining table, a mere metre away, you want to carry everything from inside, outside?! Don't forget the numerous shuttle runs for more condiments, extra knives, forgotten napkins, and to fill water glasses up. Then you have to do it all again once you've finished eating. The inefficiency!
The food goes cold and congealed so much faster. While you're racing back and forth from house to patio, your rotisserie chicken has gone cold, flies have buzzed into your ice cream, and the salad has given up in the humidity.
The weather never turns out for you. It may have been gloriously still and sunny just moments before you all trooped outside, but the second you try biting into your dinner, sat at a picnic bench, the clouds roll in, a gale picks up and rain threatens overhead.
Dinnertime is when your family does their best bickering and arguing – do you really want the whole neighbourhood to hear you shouting and throwing garlic bread at each other?
You're just more likely to spill stuff outside. Blame the fact that al fresco food tends to be more hands on (hotdogs, burgers, corn on the cob), but guaranteed, your shirt will end up way more decorated after an al fresco meal, than if you'd just stayed in the house.
Picnics are out to get you. Even if you don't topple over after being sat down crossed-legged for so long, you are bound to either accidentally sit on a paper plate of picnic food, or kick over a bottle of wine.