Meeting up with people to eat food — that’s the idea behind Eat With Me, a website devoted to turning strangers into friends. Sounds simple. But of course, I like making things a little more complicated. So I came up with a theme: all the dishes and drinks at my picnic had to be yellow.

Theresa (on left) mingling with other Yellow Picnic guests

Eat With Me’s Yellow Picnic

I’ve been attending and hosting Eat With Me events for a couple of years now. (It was founded in Melbourne, but anyone can post an event worldwide.) Last year I co-hosted an event called ‘The Red Wed–er, Dinner.’ Yes, a Game of Thrones reference for all of you GoT fans out there. Every single item of food had to be red. No food colouring allowed!

Eat With Me’s Yellow Picnic foods

This time ’round it was all about yellow, hence the Yellow Picnic. What kind of foods are yellow? Quite a few, as it turns out. We ended up with everything from yellow capsicums to homemade lemon butter; a Persian saffron cake and Mexican-style corn salad; polenta and pineapple. Bonus points went out to anyone wearing yellow. I spent a couple of months grabbing any and all yellow clothes at clothing swaps in preparation for lending them out on the day. It’s always more fun when you truly get into it.

Yellow people at the Yellow Picnic

The best part was mingling with friends old and new. We had people from Estonia, the U.S., Turkey, Poland, Israel, Indonesia, Germany, France, Iran, England, Singapore, and of course, Australia all enjoying themselves and the food everyone brought.

As I said, anyone’s free to post an event. And it doesn’t have to be colour-related. (Although there’s been talk of a Green Dinner or a Purple/Blue Lunch…) Next on the Melbourne agenda is the Scarf dinner on Tues. 31st at The Plus Ones’ fave, Green Park Dining. Come along and eat with me!

-Theresa