Hi everyone! I’m Cyn from Creative Cynchronicity, my blog where I share my creative passions like cooking, crafting, parenting, DIY, and so much more. I’d love for you to come by and visit sometime – I’ll have the sweet tea ready for you!

What’s summer without a picnic? They have always been one of our favourite activities in my family and I don’t let being an empty nester spoil my fun. If no one else is around, I just take myself on a picnic! Recently, I went on a road trip to Arkansas (1000 miles from where I live in London, Ontario, Canada) and one of the ways I survived such a long drive was by packing a cooler and picnic basket of delicious, nutritious food rather than hitting up one fast food joint after another.

Just like picnics, watermelon and summer are the perfect pairing. If you’re like me, you wait all year for watermelon to come into season. What could be more refreshing on a hot summer day? Here’s the recipe for one of my all-time favourite picnic dishes which just so happens to feature watermelon as its main ingredient:

Watermelon Salad

Combine together:

1 1/2 lb watermelon – cubed
1 large orange – segmented (can also add some fresh berries like raspberries, blueberries, and/or blackberries or other summer fruits such as peaches or nectarines to this)
1/4 small onion – very thinly sliced onion (red, sweet Vidalia, Cipollinis, or the equivalent in shallots)
2 oz feta cheese
crumbled 1/4 cup fresh mint leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Top of your salad with one of the following:

4 tsp olive oil and the juice of one lime squeezed over it or Curtis Stone’s simple syrup with lime and mint (omit the mint in the recipe above)
reduced balsamic vinegar (simply warm up over low heat in a saucepan on the stove until it reduces to a thick, almost syrup like consistency) or Rachael Ray’s balsamic reduction (which has a bit of brown sugar added to it).

This can be made ahead of time and stored in the refrigerator or a cooler until ready to serve.

Yum yum yum!

Thanks so much Ann Marie for allowing me to share a bit of my world with your readers!

Thank you, Cyn!

I love this recipe for many reasons. It can be customized through the use of different dressings, or different types of onions, so you can have it all the time but switch it up.

I usually have all of these ingredients on hand during the summer, so no trip in the ridiculous weather is required.

And while I like buying watermelon, we all love it, I get intimidated by the huge, juicy ones and don’t know what to do with that much watermelon. We just can’t eat it all before it goes bad!

I think we’re going to have this for dinner tonight!

I’m going to crack open the beast I have sitting on my counter today. Help me out,