Today is National Picnic Day.  It’s a perfect time of year for it, since it’s just warming up enough to enjoy picnics!  (This is actually the first week we’ve had two warm days in a row.  It’s so nice!)  We got the opportunity to try out a few products that make great additions to picnic packing and wanted to share them with you.  (Plus one of you will win these products for your own picnic.)

So what is packed in our picnic basket?

Viki’s Granola

This is gluten-free granola.  Yay!  That means Mama got to eat it.  And Mama actually ate the whole bag.  It was that good.  (Not at one sitting.  But I didn’t share.)  This is pretty “clean.”  GF oats, almond slices, blueberries, and seasonings.  I think that’s pretty much it.  This was delicious!

It also comes in other flavors: apple cinnamon, banana walnut, original honey, and cranberry walnut.  You can get it on Amazon, through Viki’s website, or, I assume, some local retailers.

Bauli Mini Croissants

The one “junk food” in our basket, Bauli mini croissants are a delicious dessert option.  They’re also the only gluten-ful food in our basket, so I didn’t try them, but my children assure me they’re delicious.  🙂  One whole package is only a little over 300 calories, and each mini croissant is about the size of a donut hole, so they’re a good size for having a little bit of dessert without going overboard on the junk.  (These don’t come in a gluten-free variety, but some of Bauli’s other products are gluten-free.)

Carrington Farms Flax Hemp Paks

These Flax Hemp Paks from Carrington Farms are “ready-to-eat,” but they’re probably not something you’re going to eat by themselves.  Individual servings of hemp seeds and flax seeds, they’re fabulous for topping yogurt, oatmeal, etc.  The individually-sealed packages are helpful for keeping the seeds all from going rancid, because you aren’t opening a big container and exposing it to air.

Each packet holds quite a bit.  When we did snack-sized bowls of yogurt, we were easily able to top three bowls from a single packet.  (If we were doing a whole meal, one would have been more of a “one-bowl” thing.)  You could also add these to ice cream or frozen yogurt instead of nuts for a bit of crunch, use them in a fruit crisp topping, etc.  I like to add flax and hemp seeds to my smoothies for their omega-3’s.

And the packets travel well in a purse, diaper bag, briefcase, or lunch box.  (These are also available on Amazon, and even have a Subscribe & Save option.  But Amazon has them as a package of 6 boxes, so either make sure you’ll go through them relatively quickly, or go in with a friend.)

AquaBall

I have to admit, we weren’t huge fans of AquaBall.  Flavored water just isn’t really our thing.  But if you like flavored water, this seems to be well-done, sweetened with stevia instead of yucky synthetic options.  It comes in fruit punch, orange, berry frost, and grape flavors, and has fun characters on the packaging.  The shape of the bottles makes them tougher to knock over than the traditional slim, upright bottles.

Go Organically Fruit Snacks

Go Organically fruit snacks are one of my favorite products from our basket.  These tender, chewy fruit snacks are made much like conventional fruit snacks, but without any really awful ingredients.  The little pouches they come in are not much bigger than tea bags, so they’re awesome for keeping stashed in a purse or the diaper bag, and they’d make a great addition to lunch boxes.

Also they’re not rubbery.  (Chewy is good, but I like to be able to chew my fruit snacks, which for some is a challenge.  These are perfect.)  And of course they’re a great addition to the picnic basket.  (You can pop these in your Amazon cart, too.)

Pack Your Picnic

These probably aren’t going to make your picnic basket all on their own.  You’ll probably need to add a “main attraction,” like sandwiches, tuna salad, or fried chicken.  But these make handy sides and beverages to round it out.  Enter to win these items for your own basket via the Rafflecopter widget below.  (If you’re on mobile and it’s acting weird, you might have to move to a “real” computer to enter.)
a Rafflecopter giveaway