Sunny Picnic Food

Last Thursday, we decided it was a perfect sunny day to spend relaxing at the park. It was a little last minute so I didn’t have the time to put together a real picnic, but we had some leftover pizza dough which was just enough for two yummy focaccias.

I topped mine with garlic, herbs, onions, olives, and a new (to me) vegan pizza cheese  – Wilmersburger Pizzaschmelz – which I’ll write more about in a later post. We used the dough recipe from Nonna’s Italian Kitchen and it is absolutely the best pizza dough I’ve ever made. I’m going to try to have a batch of the dough around as often as possible, because I love being able to whip up pizza or focaccia whenever the need arises!

Along with the bread, I also made us a batch of muffins. I wanted something summery and fresh, so a lemon flavour was perfect. I made the muffins using this recipe for Lemon Thyme Quickbread, which I’d made and loved before a few years ago. Apart from changing the recipe to turn it into muffins, I also used this clever shortcut to replace the soy yoghurt in the recipe. They turned out just as delicious as I remembered! Hopefully it won’t take me another three years to make the recipe again.

Here’s a closeup of my muffin! That first bite was as much as I could eat before I was confronted by a big white goose who really wanted me to share. He almost scared me off with his loud hissing, but we decided to stay and watch the little goslings. Cute!

Apart from eating, reading, and lying in the grass, we also managed to explore the park a little. We paid a visit to the Japanese garden, which is apparently only open to public during a few weeks each year. It was very pretty, so I’m glad we were able to see it before it closed!