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 :)

A Celebration Weekend

It was an eventful, yet happy and celebratory weekend!

Saturday I had a friend’s baby shower…and there’s nothing cuter than seeing all the cute baby clothes.

And on Sunday I celebrated another friend’s Bridal Shower, AND my aunt and uncle’s 60th birthdays!!

This morning I headed down to my blog-friend-turned-real-friend Elizabeth’s bridal shower!!

She is getting married in November, and today her bridesmaids threw her a beautiful shower down at her family’s house.

There were lots of gifts

Good food

And adorable cupcakes

I was also the first winner at Bridal Bingo!  Booya!

Tina, Elizabeth, and Me :)

I can’t wait for their big day!

Straight from the shower, I headed to my aunt and uncle’s house for a birthday bash that my cousins threw for them!

No lack of amazing food…

Fresh figs on Dubliner cheese…awesome combination!!

Giant bowl of tomato & mozzarella salad!!

The main dish…Lobster Rolls…tons and tons of lobster rolls

On hot buttery rolls.  Drooling just looking at the picture now.  I had one, and then split another with Brian later.

But I think my FAVORITE dish of the day was this Mexican Seafood Cocktail

It was similar to a cold gazpacho, but it had lots of crab meat, shrimp, and big chunks of avocado!

SOOooo delicious.  The recipe is here on Epicurious, and I NEED to make this soon!!       

There was also two huge Pavlovas for dessert (giant meringue topped with fresh whipped cream and strawberries),  along with a pink champagne birthday cake!  

It was a fun and delicious afternoon with family!

This weekend flew by, and sadly work tomorrow!  

Question… what’s you’re favorite meal to make in the heat of the summer??  I feel like I’ve had less and less meals to post on here because I’m just not cooking as much or as creatively in this hot summer heat!!

RTB MA {relay recaps} Part 1

Where to begin... I never really jumped on board when everyone started calling everything "epic", but now I get it because that was seriously an EPIC adventure this weekend participating in the Massachusetts Reach the Beach Relay!!

I will remember this amazing weekend with these amazing women always!  

Need a refresher?  Here’s the list of ladies in our running order:

Team Off Balance

Gretchen – Honey I Shrunk the Gretchen
Jess – Fit Chick in the City
Melissa – Fitness NYC
Patricia – Run Foodie Run
Me!
Sarah – Sarah Fit
Tina - Carrots ‘n Cake
Monica – Run Eat Repeat
Theodora – Losing Weight in the City
Elizabeth – On Tap for Today
Anne – Fannetastic Food
Ashley – A Healthy, Happier Bear

There were also our unbelievably amazing drivers Nicole and Monica!!  They easily became part of the family this weekend too!!! 

I need to rewind a bit back to Thursday though. I left work early, made a quick stop at Whole Foods for some last minute provisions, and headed to the New Balance headquarters in Brighton to meet the team.

We quickly packed up the vans and headed north to Lawrence for a tour of the manufacturing facilities and the lab where they test all the shoes.

I used to work 5 minutes away from the New Balance in Lawrence for over 5 years and I never knew everything that actually took place here.
Some fun facts:

• NB created it's first shoe in 1982 with their 990, which is still their top shoe.
• This was also the first athletic shoe to break $100 and no one thought it would sell.
• Whoever said that is kicking themselves now though, because as of today their have been 14,000,000 pairs of the 990 sold!!!
• NB is also the only athletic shoe company that still manufactures shoes in the USA! 25% of their shoes are made in the county.

(material waiting to become shoes)

We were lucky enough to tour the manufacturing floor and actually see these 990's being made. I've never seen anything like this before. Its crazy to see the shoes go from pieces of materials all the way into sneakers!

A shoe is made about every 22.5 seconds!

 
After that tour we headed downstairs to visit the  Sports Research Lab.

There were a few desks, but also a treadmill, basketball hoop, lifting bar, and other equipment that made me thinks they don't have onto sit behind their computers all day.

 
We saw and tried out some of their technology that analyzes how you run, if you pronate, how your foot strikes the ground, and how they test their shoes against competitors.

I learned that I strike the ground on my mid foot, which it what I had thought. Apparently striking mid-food helps avoid injury. But we also talked about how being a heel striker is not necessarily a bad thing if you do it right. However most people don't do it right and that's why it has a bad rep.

One of the guys that worked down in the lab also was telling us his theory about how when other parts of the body are injured you keep them in a cast/sling/brace for the short term and then get them back to their natural range of motion.  However, if someone pronates, they get a corrective shoe and that’s that.  Basically saying that being an over-pronator may just be how some people naturally run and as long as their not in pain or injured, why correct it??  Interesting…

We then headed back to the vans, and headed to the Wachusett Village Inn, where we would be spending the night before the relay. 

We checked in, had a few minutes to relax and then we gathered by a campfire outside while we had our first interaction with the videographer.  We had a videographer with us the entire time, and not just filming…but he is creating 5 episodes for the Reach the Beach facebook page about our journey.  We talked about what we are nervous about, what our thoughts were going into the race, and our goals. 

When he first talked about creating “conflict” I started thinking Real World: Reach the Beach.  But in reality it was more our own conflicts with what we might struggle with over the course of the relay.

Then it was dinner time!

Maybe nachos aren’t the best pre-race dinner…oh well!  I also had a big salad, and a few bites of mac and cheese that was passed around the table.  I love people who share :)

Just like the HLS, Elizabeth was my roomie and partner in crime…sadly we weren’t in the same van but we kept in constant contact via the twitter machine.  

In fact…twitter + group texting = the most action my cell phone has seen in a 2-day period EVER.  If you’ve  never group texted…get on it.  Its life changing.

After breakfast Friday morning we all headed to Mt. Wachusett to register, go through orientation, and get ready to send Gretchen off on the first leg!!

I love these girls!

Team Fast Food Nation:

Loved some of the costumes we saw!!

Gretchen getting ready to tackle the first leg…basically up Mt Wachusett!

And they’re off!   

I’m guessing by now you’ve read some of the other re-caps, and we were all trying not to do TOO many posts but there is just SO much to share.  I’m going to stop here for now, but I can’t WAIT to talk about the actual race!!!