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 :)