Jersey Shore Birthday

It was a wild, windy and blowy day today, a perfect day to go to the Jersey Shore! It was my sister's birthday, so I drove to the shore with her and my niece to celebrate. This is just the way we like the shore - off-season, wild, windy, few people around. Even though it was raining I did run up to look at the jetty at Manasquan Inlet. Wow, the waves sure were crashing over the top of the jetty. I got pretty wet too. :-)
I even got my sister and niece to come up to look at the jetty with me, though they decided they would rather go further down the boardwalk where they could get a cup of coffee, and we all went into the Arcade and played Skee Ball , a traditional favorite.
After that it was lunchtime, and we went to our favorite restaurant and got a great corner table overlooking the Manasquan River. We all had seafood and it was delicious. I did succumb to a couple hush puppies, alas. But my scallops were wonderful.
Then we drove home along the shore, and my sister and niece indulged me in allowing me to drive around several ponds and inlets to look for water birds. And there were plenty, including Canada geese, brants, mute swans, mallards, muscovy ducks, hooded mergansers, common mergansers, red-breasted mergansers, ruddy ducks, northern shovelers, black ducks, canvasbacks, scaups, American widgeons, American coots...plus plenty of gulls, mostly ring-billed, but a few herring gulls, and quite a few great black-backed gulls also. Not to mention pigeons, mourning doves, starlings, robins, house sparrows, cardinals. All in all, quite a "birdy" day.

Then time to go have dinner at my sister's, and we finally got to cut the cake I made yesterday. I really enjoyed it, and love the peanutty hint of flavor that the peanut flour gives it.

The only problem was that the cake really was awfully flat and dense. It *tasted* good. But the first time I made this cake recipe the cake came out really light and fluffy, just like a standard wheat cake. The only difference between the two times was that I never use almond milk, so I used coconut milk in the recipe, but this time I went out and bought the almond milk the recipe called for. But I can't see why that would make the cake flat. It tasted good anyway, or at least it did to me. My sister's family mostly wanted the cake they bought at the bakery. :-)