Oyster Crackers with Cracked Fennel Seeds
Potato Salad with Capers and Soft-Cooked Eggs
Bittersweet Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Sea-Salt Buttercream
From early April to mid-May, Nantucket is blanketed in yellow as its roadsides, gardens, and window boxes bloom with daffodils. Forty-three years ago, inspired by this quintessential sign of the season and eager to “banish the winter doldrums and welcome spring,” the island’s Chamber of Commerce began what has been a lively annual tradition during the last weekend of April ever since: The Daffodil Festival of Nantucket.
The weekend’s events begin first thing on a Friday and run almost nonstop through Saturday and Sunday. Each day is jam-packed with activities: house and garden tours; a Children’s Parade where daffodil-decorated strollers, wagons, and bicycles are shown off; the Daffy Dog Parade where canine friends are decked out in garlands, jaunty chapeaus, and any other garb a good dog can tolerate. There are art shows, the Daffodil 5K Race, and lots of contests—the Daffy Hat contest, Best Window-Box contest, Fifty Shades of Nantucket history quiz contest, and on and on.
A highlight of the Daffodil Festival and a fun-for-all-ages event is the annual Classic and Antique Cars parade. Gleaming cars (some of them dating back to the early twentieth century) that have been maintained and polished to museum standards are pulled out of storage for this occasion. Decorated with lavish daffodil and floral arrangements worthy of England’s annual Chelsea Flower Show, the cars make their way along Main Street and through the heart of downtown. Crowds cheer the drivers as they head toward the eastern end of the island for the culmination of the Daffodil Festival: tailgate picnics at ’Sconset, an idyllic village of weathered shingle cottages set above a long sweep of beach and bluffs.
Tailgate picnics on Nantucket capture the islanders’ collective joy at spring’s arrival, where the season is welcomed as it should be: spreads call for champagne (kept chilled in ice buckets), tins and boxes and hampers of items like caviar, cold lobster, Cobb salad, rustic bread, artisan cheeses, layered cakes, and thermoses of tea.
We love any opportunity for alfresco dining. For your own spring-time tailgate picnic, we’ve put together a menu that can (mostly) be eaten without utensils and that satisfies an appetite built by a day spent outside in the fresh spring air. These recipes can be prepared in advance and transported to your picnic in a sturdy basket. Other than spoons and large mugs for the chowder, and forks for the potato salad, you’ll just need plates, lots of napkins, and glassware for the wine. Set up your camp, raise a glass, and dig in!