Some Local Action

Lots of great LOCAL things this weekend!  Including our dinner tonight!

Roasted chicken from our meat CSA.  We just started this CSA last month through Chestnut Farm, and I’ll tell you a lot more about it later this week after we pick up this month’s share this week! 

Red leaf lettuce and corn from the Farmer’s Market this morning.  The corn was super sweet and I wish we had bought more!  Luckily I have access to various Farmer’s Markets during the week in Boston.  Sometimes I like to swing through at lunch time.

Even the homemade croutons were made from Sour Dough bread from Nashoba Brook Bakery out of West Concord, MA.  So far this is the only TRUE sourdough we can find at Whole Foods (or any of our grocery stores around here).  Even the Whole Foods bakery sourdough has yeast and an added acetic agent.  If you want traditional sourdough bread…which is generally easier to digest because of the fermentation, then it should have basically 2 ingredients….flour and water. Maybe salt.  But NO yeast!!  The yeast is created by a starter of water and flour which creates its own wild yeast. 

I digress….

The chicken was made using my favorite recipe…Thomas Keller’s Simple Roast Chicken.  It’s just the best.   Last time I roasted a chicken I even went back to my previous “go-to” recipe (Barefoot Conetessa’s), but it just wasn’t the same.  Plus this is the SIMPLEST recipe ever.  The high heat + chicken fat can cause some smoke in the oven but this time we put a foil lined cookie sheet underneath to help :)  

It’s SO worth it for that crispy skin!

The corn was grilled.  And the croutons were made last minute by cutting up 2 slices of bread into cubes, heating about 1 tablespoon of butter in a skillet, and toasting the bread!  Mmmm buttery grilled bread.

I also whipped up a quick vinaigrette of olive oil, red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, garlic, salt, pepper, oregano, and dill.

  Dinner was simply awesome.

Earlier in the day we had another Farmer’s Market find of an heirloom “pineapple” tomato, made into caprese salad with basil from our garden. 

Brian and I devoured this.

In other Local fun…the Healthy Living Summit was this weekend!! 

I had purchased a ticket, but ended up only being able to come for the cocktail party + Saturday morning, but I still had a great time!

The conference was at the Hyatt on Memorial Drive in Cambridge which I actually had never been to before!

  
view of Boston from across the Charles River taken from the glass elevator inside the hotel!

Got ready for the cocktail party

Reunited with my HLS 2011 roomie Elizabeth who planned the whole cocktail party!!

She did a bang up job.  And we had fun with the photo booth props during a little Reach the Beach reunion…

(above 2 photos from Tina)

 

(above photo from Ashley)

The night ended with some quality roomie bonding over my first ever Room Service!

Yes we pulled the cart between our beds :)

As I mentioned before I had to cut my HLS short this year…because my friend’s daughter was turning 1!!

I mean who could resist this face…

 

Concluding with a stop at the new Merrimack Premium Outlets and my weekend has come full circle :)

Dancing, Dough, and Doggies

It wasn’t until this afternoon that I really sat down at the computer for any length of time since Thursday night!  It was actually pretty nice.  My weekend was a mix of super busy + down time. 

For one, it was my dance show!  I know I’ve mentioned it before but since February I’ve been rehearsing with a contemporary dance company in NH, directed by a friend of mine.

We had our shows Friday and Sat night… 

 
A little backstage action.  One of the girls was an expert hair teaser so she did all of ours for the final piece.

some of the girls stretching before the show!

The opening…

Yes, I am wearing bubble wrap.  There was a whole big theme to the show, called White Earth, and the first piece (“Resource Depletion”) involved the “plastic” dancers eating away at the “earth”.  I guess you can tell I was a “plastic”

It would make way more sense with the video, the dance was awesome and probably the hardest choreography I’ve ever done.  There was video taken, and as soon as I can get that from someone I’d love to share it!!  Just not sure when that will be :)  It will be a surprise one day haha. 

I took the day off Friday as I had to be at the theater by 12:45pm for a last run through before the show that night.  So I used Friday morning to bake something to bring for the cast.

I wanted something fairly simple yet delicious.  Then I remembered.

Dough balls!!  Those blog-famous little cookie dough-like cookies, that became so popular after the Foodbuzz Festival last year.  I still have never tasted the original, but I did get to try Diana’s at the HLS this year, and they were delicious.

I used Diana’s recipe as my base and made some tweaks.  They came out awesome, but I can’t wait to make them again to finalize “my” version :)

Screw raw eggs…I’m never NOT going to eat the dough…

I also need to get a scooper, not that I needed it but I was anally weighing each ball so they were uniform…and ended up with 1.25oz balls pre-baked. 

These were a freaking HIT!!

Almost everyone wanted the recipe! 

Saturday morning Brian and I were cleaning machines and tackled the house before some of his friends arrived.

They were off to the Belgian Beer Fest.  Beer + Dance = Bad, so I didn’t get to go :(  It’s usually in November so I was extra bummed that this fest AND the Sam Adams Oktoberfest were both the same weekend on a weekend that I couldn’t go!! 

But I did have a relaxing afternoon in a clean house, until it was time to get ready for show #2

Today was a time to unwind.  We ended up spending most of the morning watching the 9-11 tributes on TV…I was definitely getting choked up multiple times.  Feels like just yesterday…

But it was a gorgeous day out so we made the most of it :)

Family trip to the dog park!

We tried to get him to step into the water but no such luck…

He did, however, find a pug named Maggie and a bulldog named MJ to play with!

   
That bulldog was hilarious!  He was like a little meatball :)

Ok so what really happened was Maggie, the pug, was running around with Bromley for a while before MJ came over.  Then Brom decided to relax and just watch them go at it haha!

Later on the walk back Brom thought he could chase a vizsla that was running by…right.  He’s cute and fluffy but not exactly the fastest dog in the pack.  It was pretty funny, the vizsla would just run circles around him, then he gave up and needed a water break

   so.thirsty.

and so tired on the way home…

Our nice little Sunday ended with a big pot of chili, foot ball, and now I’m thinking it’s almost bed time.

The chili was my go-to recipe with ground turkey…oh and I added some shredded zucchini too.  STILL working through the zucchini!

Weekends like this remind me why I love September so much!!  Yet, my Fall isn’t real until we go apple picking…oh yes.

What’s you’re favorite part of fall??

HLS Part 2: Cocktail Party and Speakers

Unfortunately I’m writing this post from my plane, that is sitting in the runway waiting to take off and will continue to be sitting for about another hour…awesome.

Delays are bad enough without being stuck on the plane during it!

EDIT: We waited in the plane for about 1.5 hours before finally taking off…it’s so amazing to be home.

AND to come home to a super clean house!!  Best husband ever :)

Anyways, lets not let this one bad event ruin my recap of the rest of the Healthy Living Summit! 

I left off Friday evening just as we were heading out to the cocktail party!

The cocktail party was also at the Reading Terminal Market where Elizabeth and I had had lunch earlier that day!  It was so cool to see it at night after all the shoppers and workers had gone home.

Everyone waiting to be escorted to our area

We were in the center where the tables were and had tables of food as well as passed hors d’ourves. 

There were veggies, cheeses, different pizzas, fruits, and crackers.  The passed hors d’ourves consisted of beet salad, Philly cheese steak empanadas, corn and crab fritters, and pretzel crusted chicken!

I tried most of the items and everything was delicious.  I also had a local beer: Walt Wit White Ale from Philadelphia Brewing Co.  Really liked this beer.

It was fun catching up with some bloggers I haven’t seen in a while and also meet some new faces!

(roomie picture!)

Elizabeth and I didn’t stay out too late that night, however, we had made plans with some people to do a 5ish mile run at 6am the next morning!

It really hit me when we had to wake up when it was still dark out!!  NOT fun…but once we were running we felt way better.  It was perfect running weather, cool and not sunny.

At one point, Elizabeth, Ali and I branched off because our mission that morning was NOT just a run…it was to see the Rocky steps!

Ali and I running up!

Then obligatory posed photos with Rocky himself

  

That was a blast!

None of our Garmin’s were really working that great, but we estimated that we did around 5.5 miles!  Nice!!

Once we returned, iced coffeed (yes I just turned that into a verb), showered, and changed…it was breakfast time.

Fresh fruit

Cereal, provided by Quaker and Attune.  Yogurt and milk.

  Love this…but might change it to “Breakfast is my other happy hour”

Then it was time for the sessions to begin.

The first one I went to was Budgeting for a Healthy Lifestyle presented by Lauren.  

I thought she was a great presenter.  She seemed very comfortable with public speaking and spoke clearly and with ease.  I really enjoyed it.

Although there wasn’t really any new or groundbreaking ideas on how to save money while eating healthy (and she said that as well)…it was really helpful to just hear all the information again.  Sometimes you just need to be reminded of how to budget, meal plan, use coupons, and other methods. 

I know I need to work on my meal planning skills.  I think that one thing would really help us cut down on the food, specifically produce, that we pick out and then end up throwing out because it never made it into our lunches or dinners.  I hate throwing out food, but it happens.

Also this picture in her slideshow was classic and hilarious

Hard to see but the woman is standing there smiling happily with her big bag of groceries, and the husband is looking at the receipt with an expression of “flipping out” haha! 

During the break we had after this session, Elizabeth, Ali, and I snuck out for a few.  First stop was City Sports for Philadelphia t-shirts, and then I wanted to checkout the Rittenhouse Sq Farmers Market per suggestion from Sabrina! 

Beautiful day, and wish I could of actually bought more at the Market.  I did buy 1 apple for a snack.

There was one other session before lunch, but I’ll get to that next post.  I’ll wrap up with lunch!

Salad, quinoa and chickpea salad, and 4 different vegetarian sandwich options with bread provided by Great Harvest!!

I love GH bread, but it sounded like a lot of people had never had it before.  It sounded like everyone was going nuts over this fresh bread. 

I chose a roasted veggie sandwich and a caprese sandwich.    

Not surprisingly this post is already too long…and it’s bed time! 

Really wish I had one more day off to relax before work, but it was a great weekend. 

Big shout out to Meghann for organizing the whole thing…amazing job girl!!