What's needed here is a some common sense. Hopefully that will come in the next review, cause you won't find it here in this one.

In the meantime:

1) If you eat chowder out of a can, your idea of a good pasta meal is probably Chef Boy R Dee.

2) The correct time to eat chowder is when you balls turn midnight blue. If they're medium blue, you may proceed with the cooking. Check nads constantly so as not to disrupt this precise and mandated timetable.

3) Manhattan Chowder is for Gloria Estefan concerts only. If you disregard this rule, you will be hunted down and steamed by a Cape Cod clam digger.

4) A quart of Amsoil is necessary in the correct preparation of any genuine New England Clam Chowder recipe. Trust me on this. Any leftover oil should be properly disposed of in the ocean.

5) If you really had any sense at all, you'd fuck (not literally I hope) the chowder and grab yourself a bushel or two of Ipswich steamers, two truckloads of butter and a hooker. I call this a dicknick.

You may now commence with your meal...

For one thing, I'm not a fan of chowder of any kind, but this seems to me like something that would fit better up at a ski lodge, or somewhere that's cold. Not at a picnic.

The Great Chowder Controversy...

If someone handed me a bowl of chowder at a picnic on the Suwannee River on a mid August day in Florida, they'd get "the look".

If someone handed me a bowl of chowder in Maine, on a cool September day, at a picnic on the rocks, over-looking the ocean, it would be more welcome, but I think it might be a little tricky to get it there hot enough to have to cool-off that first spoonful with a little puff of breath.

If it were an indoor picnic and a woman walked into my bedroom, wearing only a lacy apron, deliverying a steamy bowl of chowder, I wouldn't care what time of the year it was.

Chowder's good stuff, but it has its time and place...like hot pizza, a bowl of cereal, or gefilte fish...

Chowder would be fine. Sometimes I really like clam chowder it depends. If it was by the sea it would be different. Otherwise I might get something else. My friend from the extras, a girl said that I must eat clam chowder when finding out I was from New England as if it was a terrible thing.

This deep-seated loathing for outdoor chowder is a clear indication that not enough people on RateItAll have ever been to a clambake (aka picnicking at its best).

I love clam chowder. But as a picnic food, I'm not too sure about it. I see clam chowder as a sit-down type of food fare, typically served in restaurants or indoor events where a person might have just come from the cold.

I just now returned from a picnic. Global warming affected it. It was 65 degrees with a twenty knot wind. COLD! Chowder would have been good today, July 16 in the current year of Global Warming, but we had none. Sigh. Chowder is about the last food you would ever have on a picnic.

Soup seems like an odd picnic food to me, but if it's cold out, it might be a great idea. Good chowder is really tasty, and it can get quite chilly around here in the summertime if the fog is in.

Bring a big blanket, some wine, bread, and a large thermos with some clam and crab chowder in it.

Yes, I like it (especially Progresso brand), but a little awkward for BBQs and picnics.

I usually love chowder, but its not my idea of a picnic food at all. Chowder's are usually served warm, and picnic food is stuff that can be eaten out in a park or nature without having to heat it up. This doesn't really seem to fit the list.

I would never associate any form of chowder with a picnic. I also won't touch clam chowder of any variety. Certain potato based soups are sometimes referred to as chowders, and some of those can be quite good, but I consider them to be cold weather foods.

This all depends. I really like New England clam chowder, which is the white, but only have it if I'm near water - at a restaurant on the ocean or by a lake or river. Somehow I think it will taste better. The red I will eat at any occasion although it is much more rare, I like it about equally - it doesn't taste quite as good, but the clams have more taste because they aren't blinded by the sauce.