Picnicing Fun at Buntzen Lake!

Well, this time around my family went out for a real outdoor picnic (unlike the backyard one me and my sisters had a couple weeks ago :P). We met up with some church friends and prepared for a lovely time outdoors. Buntzen Lake was fun, although it could have been warmer... perhaps then I would have ventured into the frigid water. But, I was content to sit on the pier and watch the little kids fish and dip my toes in the cool lake. We played some card games, ran around on the beach and of course... ate!

Playing Uno! The best card-game in the world!

My contribution to the picnic was a Marbled Matcha Loaf and some Marbled Mini Matcha Cupcakes. I used the same old matcha cake recipe from matchasource.com but instead of adding green tea powder to all the batter, I added it only to 1/2 the batter. I then proceeded to add some vanilla extract to the "white" batter and then marbled the cakes as usual. I planned on making all of the batter into mini-cupcakes, but I only had one mini-muffin pan and making all the batter 12 cupcakes at a time was going to be tedious. I gave up and just made a loaf :P

Another lady from the church made these beautiful konnyaku jellies in the shape of koi. The taste was amazing, I must attempt this recipe sometime soon. But first I must buy some konnyaku!

The picnic was a success! If you take a close look at the first picture in this post, you'll see a KFC bucket of chicken :P Yup, I just can't escape the colonel and his deep-fried poultry. Well, since my boss goes to my church it was inevitable that he would bring his beloved chicken. I actually overheard another picnic-ing group talking about the chicken, they joked about coming over to join us and have some of the "Summer Picnic Meal". We were about ready to go home around 8:45pm since the park closed at 9pm, but the rain beat us to the punch. At first when it started to drizzle, we thought it was just the boys playing with their water-guns and spraying us... but then we realized that the down-pour was increasing. We grabbed our gear and made our way back to the cars as quickly as possible. Even with the rain, I must say I had a great time at the Lake.