According to the weather people, yesterday was supposed to be a complete washout here in Boston. Our weekend planning revolved around that forecast. I would work, hubs would work on his Master’s assignment for the week, and we would spend much of our time housebound. Imagine our surprise and delight when we woke up on Saturday morning to a perfect blue sky and bright sunshine. We quickly got ready, downed POM Wonderful green monsters, and headed to the river for the Head of the Charles. The Head of the Charles is an annual autumn rowing competition that brings rowers from all over the world. If nice out, it is a great way to spend an autumn day, watching the rowers, maybe stopping somewhere in Cambridge for lunch, and enjoying the outdoors before the long winter sets in. Even more of an incentive than the bright day was the fact that the Galway Rowing Club was competing in this year’s races. The hubs rowed in Galway for many years and still loves the sport. If it wasn’t so incredibly time consuming, I would say that he would row for a club here in Boston. Anyway, we left the house, drove over to the Cambridge side of the river, parked the car, and walked along the river until we found a good spot for race watching.
Even one of my POM Wonderful samples came along. 
It was an absolutely gorgeous day, just a nip in the air, but it felt so good to be outside! While we waited for the race that the Galway men were in, we crossed the street to get a coffee at Starbucks. I had the Clover Sumatra coffee with a packet of sugar in the raw and some skim milk. It was okay, but not great. We also shared a chicken salad sandwich and sat outside to enjoy the sunshine. I made a new friend. 
I don’t think he was as interested in me as he was in the sandwich, but he didn’t get any of it. Isn’t he gorgeous?! Finally, we headed back to the river and got to see Galway row by.
And that was it. I think the watching the races part of the Head of the Charles is a bit boring because the boats start at different times and it all goes by time. Its not like watching a marathon or other running race where you can actually see the tension between the top contenders and can cheer them on to a victory.Still the atmosphere is great, and if you are ever in town for this weekend, I would definitely recommend it! Our car just happened to be close to the Cambridge Trader Joe’s, so I also got the shopping for the week done. 
Our haul included TJ’s apple chicken sausage, whole wheat flour for baking, spinach for smoothies, butter lettuce and heirloom tomatoes for salads, whole wheat pizza dough for POM pizzas, cheese ravioli for a Rachael Ray inspired easy ravioli lasagna, miniature potatoes for roasting, truffle and mushroom flatbread, pumpkin for pumpkin pie yogurt, lots of TJ’s teas, and a new product for me, Trader Joe’s Super Red Drink Powder, an antioxidant supplement. With all of the travel I have coming up from November to January, I am searching for new ways to stay healthy and energized. Hopefully this will be good addition to a healthy diet, green monsters, and chia tea.
This flatbread pizza is sooooooo good! At $4.99 it is a steal, with its earthy truffle-y goodness. I love grocery shopping, but I also love getting it out of the way and having a well-stocked house for the week so that meals, especially the ones that I bring to work, are easy. Looking at our groceries last night and being at home with my husband made me feel one thing, lucky. I sometimes am overwhelmed at how lucky we are to have each other, as much food as we need, a warm place to live, and work that helps to provide what we need. Today was the washout we expected. I went dog walking with dogs who did NOT want to be outside. It is quite chilly; I think I may have seen some snow mixed in with the rain. Can I tell you how glad I am that I did not run the Newport Half Marathon today? Gina was running the entire marathon down there today, and I hope she had a great race! I am off now to eat one of my favorite things on the planet, Bueno y Sano tacos, brought back from Amherst by my friend MVO. Up this week, another Blue Diamond review, my trip to the Willamette Valley
wine region, Montreal restaurant reviews, my first POM recipe, and a giveaway I am VERY excited for. Hint – the prize is something from a baker I think we have all been following over the past few months who JUST starting shipping to the US. Any guesses? 😉 I also start my food writing class tomorrow after work, so I will be sure to tell you about that. Who knows, I may even have to post an assignment or two! Have a good night and a great Monday bloggies!
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Tags: Boston, Food, giveaway, Trader Joe's
Happy Saturday evening! We are having a beautiful New England Saturday. We spent much of the day down on the banks of the Charles watching the Head of the Charles rowing event. I will have lots of photos tomorrow of the event plus a list of my great Trader Joe’s finds and what I plan on doing with them this week. I also have a very very exciting Halloween giveaway coming up that I will announce within the next few days. So hang in there. . . 🙂 We are thisclose to booking tickets to Ireland for 10 days in January, and that got me thinking about what we would do there. In our past few visits, I have always set aside a day for myself, and this ritual has become a twice yearly treat that I yearn for. I start the day by sleeping a little late and taking the family dog for a walk down by the beach.
Obviously not a photo of a morning walk! But look at that sunset on Galway Bay! After we walk, I eat a delicious hazelnut yogurt from Dunnes’ stores. Irish yogurt is far superior to anything that I can find here in the US. I realized that part of the reason I love this yogurt so much is that it has 10 grams of fat as opposed to the 0 grams that most of the yogurt I eat contains. It’s all good, I am on vacation. Following breakfast, hubs drops me off at the Spirit One Spa at the Radisson on Lough Atalia Road. The Spirit One Spa is undoubtedly one of my favorite places on earth. It is serene, beautiful, smells great, has extremely friendly employees, and is a world away from the bustling town outside, and a dozen worlds away from Boston and work. I usually book a half day at the spa which includes a massage, a facial or milk bath, afternoon tea, and several hours in the thermal suite, which is really why I go here. Here is what the Spirit One website has to say about the thermal suite:
A unique collection of cold, cool, warm and hot thermal experiences to detoxify, relax, enhance, slim, moisturise and invigorate your entire well-being, offering you the very essence of the true spa. Heated Relaxation Loungers Heated to a comfortable 36°c and designed in the ergonomic shape known to offer your body the most relaxed position it can take. The Laconium Offers a dry, gentle heat in a more relaxed environment with scented citrus oils and gentle light therapy. The Aroma Grotto A steam, moisturising cabin which is ideal for conditioning the hair and skin, enhancing and promoting true relaxation using light, heat, colour and essential oil therapy . Experience Showers Three showers, offering between them essential oils and water in the form of invigorating tropical rain and a light cool mist to refresh your mind and body between cabins. The Rock Sauna This is the hottest and driest of our thermal experiences at 85°c to 90°c, ideal for swift detoxification and invigoration. Sabia Med Explore the wonders of the sabia med or “beach” as it is better known to our guests, taking you through a meditative dawn to dusk light cycle whilst lying on a warm tropical beach. The Hammam Based on the traditional Turkish steam bath our hammam offers an intense steam heat experience with light and essential oil therapy.
Are you sold yet? Spending 2-3 hours going from sauna to steam room to a simulated beach, complete with hot sand, to a cool fog shower, to the relaxation room for a cup of herbal tea and a banana, then to a massage followed by a decadent afternoon tea is enough to melt anyone! My favorite part of the thermal suite is the Rock Sauna. I love really hot saunas, and this one brings it on. I leave here feeling completely refreshed and renewed. Once my spa experience is over, it is around 2:00 in the afternoon, and I am still a bit peckish. I take a nice long walk through Galway, pick up a big bottle of sparkling mineral water, and head to Sheridan’s Cheesemonger and Wine Shop. Located directly across from the apartment that I lived in (though it wasn’t there then!) Sheridan’s is one of my favorite wine bars in Galway, the other is Biquets. Go to both if you can. Sheridan’s Wine Bar is a small space upstairs from the cheese shop. It has a wooden bar looking out at the St. Nicholas church and the square where the Saturday market is held, and there are books and food magazines everywhere. 
The wine bar has a great selection, and I always try a Spanish red, a nice ripe rioja or tempranillo with the cheese board. They have the best wholemeal biscuits that they serve on the cheese board, along with whatever cheeses you select and maybe some grapes and nuts. I love to sit at the window sipping wine, eating cheese, reading magazines and occasionally looking out at my old apartment and reminiscing about what an incredible time I had living there. Hubs meets me a little later, and we usually then catch up with friends, but I absolutely treasure the time that I have to myself on this day. I feel like it sends me back to Boston a rejuvenated, better person, ready to be a better worker, runner, wife, and volunteer. What do you do for you? Do you ever get the opportunity to take a day to yourself to do things that you love? If you could plan a day for yourself, what would it entail? Wishing you all a restful Saturday night that will hopefully be like a mini “you” day! 🙂
Despite not meeting an important deadline yesterday and having to work this weekend, I am in an excellent mood. I got a lot done at work yesterday, and the deadline shift apparently won’t affect much after all, so all is well. Last evening was a perfect fall New England evening, with a heavy gray sky, changing leaves, and very chilly temperatures. As I walked through the South End after work, I could smell fire places and crunchy fallen leaves. It was truly exhilarating, and unlike most days, I easily shook off the work day. I met the hubs at the dog park on Washington Street, a place that I love to go to watch every breed of dog imaginable play. We walked a bit through the South End and decided to have a drink and some food at The Butcher Shop. The Butcher Shop is just another one of Barbara Lynch’s great Boston establishments, and as always, it was a great experience. We were only there for a short time, but I enjoyed a glass of sparkling wine, and we shared the antipasto della casa. It was a last minute outing, so I did not have my camera, but the antipasto was beautiful. It offered mortadella, prosciutto, salty, nutty parmesan, crispy pickled vegetables, and hummus, in addition to some other meats. We also had some nice Italian bread and fruity olive oil. My only complaint is that the antipasto had a LOT of meat compared to the amount of cheese and vegetables. But I guess at a place called The Butcher Shop, meat takes center stage. After our snack, we popped by Brix for their Oregon wine tasting. We tried August Cellars Riesling and Pinot Noir and Portteus Vineyards Merlot and Bistro Red. The Riesling was really good, nice and sweet and perfect for a summer meal. But we decided to buy a bottle of the Pinot and the Merlot. The Pinot is smooth and elegant while the Merlot offers very big, bold flavors all the way through until the finish. Our night ended with Teriyaki House sushi and catching up on the DVR. I just love low key Friday nights. Anyway, I completely digress from the point of this post, which was to cover my Wednesday night out. Going out on a Wednesday is quite the risqué move for someone my age, but it was my good friend and college roommate MVO’s (Her initials, her name is also Meghan. We had so many Meghan’s in college that we needed nicknames. I went by my last name or “little Meghan”) birthday and it was time to celebrate her entrance into the final year of the 20’s. For her birthday night out Part 1 (Part 2 is Halloween) we went to The Jury Room in Quincy. By the time you read this post, The Jury Room will be closed as it is going out of business. The Jury Room offered pretty decent bar food and an extensive, excellent beer list. On this night, they were having a free beer tasting of a variety of beers, and it promised to be a fun night. Hubs and I arrived first and looked through the beer list to make our choice. Our waitress took about 15 minutes to come over, and when we tried to order, she shut us down. Basically, they were going through their beer supply because of their closing. Fine, really, we understood, but her attitude was horrendous. I don’t even know what I ordered because she was basically yelling at us. I didn’t like it and didn’t drink it. The beer tasting included (in HOT out of the dishwasher glasses. . . just the way one likes a beer): 
Sebago Full Throttle Double IPA – VERY malty and hoppy, too strong for me, who likes strong flavors 
Newport Storm Amber Ale- Love it, I have tried this before, at the Coastal Wine Trail Kickoff and also at the Newport Marriott Unibroue Apple-Éphémère – Also love this, normally. It has a beautiful tart apple taste and is a very crisp beer. However, the glass was so hot that the beer was kind of disgusting. We also ordered a couple of other specialty beers which were $3 because of the imminent closing. I enjoyed a Gulden Draak from Belgium: 
This was excelente! A strong dark Belgian ale with a yeasty, appley, tart taste. I loved it! Throughout the night our waitress continued to show us why she should not be in the service industry. Ignored us, snapped at us, and at one point when the hubs ordered a beer, she opened it, let the foam and beer spill all over the floor, reached across me spilling beer and foam on me and my Blackberry, plopped the beer down, still dripping, and stomped off. Half of it or more was on the floor. A good waitress would have apologized and brought another and a towel. Needless to say, we had a tip for her, but it wasn’t monetary. We still had a very good time, and I was very happy to see my friends who I had not seen since June (!), but the waitress’ attitude was unnecessary. I guess that she looked at the fact that she was losing her job in a few days and just didn’t care. I would think the other way, that I would want to earn as much money as possible before the job ended. Plus, you never know when your next employer will walk through the door! What do you do when you receive bad service? Do you complain? Does it affect the tip that you leave? I feel like the service industry is definitely not for everyone, and if it is not for you, you should probably get out of it! Overall, it was still a great night. There may have been a stop at Wendy’s on the way home, but I’ll never tell 😉 Since it is Saturday, I am off to the MSPCA to walk dogs, then we are going to the Head of the Charles rowing event to cheer on the Galway Rowing Club which the hubs used to be a part of! I think a fall shopping trip is in my future as well. I am not at all prepared for winter weather, and I need both work and running gear for the cold. I will also be scheming up some recipes for the POM Wonderful shipment I received yesterday. Thanks, Lindsay!!! I have 8 bottles of POM just waiting to be used in yummy recipes. I am already thinking POM pancakes, muffins, and pizza. And of course POM mojitos 😉 I hope you all have a great day! Be back later!
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