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Hi guys! Sorry I was MIA for a few days. My looooong days of meetings are finally over, and my schedule should go back to normal for awhile- 9-5, Monday through Friday. Hooray! I am SO tired and have a lot to catch up on, especially blogging, commenting, and some other blog related things. I have a few fun posts planned for the week but wanted to post all about my food week.

My conference was at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge, MA. The food and staff at the hotel were really great. I didn’t stay overnight, but this was the view from my colleague’s room:

View of the Charles and Boston

View of the Charles and Boston

As you can see, the weather was not great. The weather in Boston this week has been crazy! Some of the hardest downpours I have ever seen, days that look like night, then gorgeous sunny spells. Luckily, we were able to still have our summer work outing to Thompson Island, which is always a lot of fun.

I am planning on doing a separate post on our Thompson Island outing because I have a lot of photos from this week.  If you will be coming to Boston for the summit and have extra days, or are just planning a trip here, I would definitely recommend a trip to one of the many islands. More on that later 🙂

For now, this week in food. I didn’t photograph everything, and I am very proud to say that at each main meal I stayed very healthy. Each day hd a fun theme for lunch, and everyday there was a huge salad and a variety of vegetarian options, so I loaded up on veggies. I did indulge fully in the snacks, but not overly so. As you will see the snacks were plentiful, beautiful, and were a big hit for people sitting in conference rooms all day long!

chocolate flan with creme anglaise

chocolate flan with creme anglaise

 

fruit, yogurt, and granola buffet

fruit, yogurt, and granola buffet

 

chocostrawberries

parfaits

parfaits

On Friday night, a bunch of us went to Les Zygomates, my favorite French restaurant in Boston. I ate a nearly identical meal to the meal I had in this post: http://traveleatlove.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/a-four-hour-dinner/ I LOVE this place! And my colleagues are a lot of fun, which is always nice. The food at this place is incredible, and as they do every Friday evening, they had live jazz. It was a great time!

The final evening of the conference was spent at Figs, a casual pizza eatery by Todd English in Charlestown, a beautiful and historic section of Boston. Let me just say that I am still full. I only have one photo, but I will do my best to describe this amazing meal.

As there were 40 of us, we booked the private room. We started with two types of bruschetta, a mushroom and goat cheese and a shrimp bruschetta that had a little spicy kick to it. We were then served two types of salad, an arugula and pear salad with goat cheese crema and their signature salad, Boston bibb lettuce and watercress with walnuts and grated blue cheese.

At this point, the servers brought out focaccia bread and bowls of olive oil with olives in the bottom.

THEN came the pizza!

Nom nom nom

Nom nom nom

This pizza was half prosciutto, fig and balsamic jam, and gorgonzola cheese with caramelized onions. The other half was cheese and tomato. My colleague and I split a slice of each. I didn’t eat the prosciutto, but wowowow that pizza was GOOD! Sweet and savory at the same time. I thought we were definitely done, but they brought out handmade pea ravioli, pan roasted salmon, and spaghettini with roasted tomatoes, garlic,  and basil. This was the perfect pasta dish!

I could not even look at the desserts, which came on a huge platter for the table to share. There were chocolate chip cookies and ice cream, cherry cobbler, creme brulee, and white chocolate bread pudding.

I can’t wait to bring my husband back to Figs; it was the perfect date night setting and the most delicious food.

I have Monday off as a comp day for working Saturday, and I need to MOVE. I can’t wait to go to my produce market and get myself back on schedule. It was a fun and successful 4 days, but I am ready for some normalcy! Off to walk some doggies and then see my nephews who are here from Italy. I haven’t seen them in over a year!!! My family is visiting next weekend, so I will also be spending some time today putting together a 2 year old friendly Boston itinerary. I will be back tonight with my Real Pickles review. This week I have planned so far a Boston Harbor Islands post as well as a dinner party 101 post. Now that our house is almost back in order, its time to have parties again!

Have a great day! I have so missed blogging and hearing from all of you!

PS – I now have a blog email address so those of you wanting to submit guest posts at any time can send them along:

traveleatlove2009@hotmail.com

Tags: Boston, Food

Wow, is it hot out! My run felt like I was in a convection oven- hot, dry, air blowing at me from all directions. It was actually great! Summer has been so MIA that I loved being in the heat, even if it made it a little more difficult to run. I feel like these difficult training days will really help me out when I am running the Newport Half in October.

Tonight is really the last night of sanity for me until Sunday! Work meetings start tomorrow, and I will be in meeting rooms from 8-5:30, followed by dinners that will probably go until about 10. I am feeling energized though, plan to check in with a few posts, and have a few guest posts that I will be featuring. Its still not too late! If you want to submit a guest post please email it as soon as you can.

Tonight is also the beginning of the arrival of lots of family. My sister in law flew in from Ireland this afternoon, and I am cooking up a rustic, veggie filled pasta sauce that I am going to serve over organic whole wheat penne, with a side of grilled aparagus with lemon and sea salt, and a choice of Travessia rose wine or Harpoon Summer beer (water and juice as well!)

I love making pasta sauces because you can be so creative and healthy, and almost everyone likes pasta! This one combines the following:

8 cloves chopped garlic

1 large shallot, chopped

1/2 vidalia onion, chopped

4 teaspoons EVOO

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 can Trader Joe’s organic plum tomatoes, crushed by hand

2-3 cups of baby bella mushrooms

1 large zucchini chopped into half moons

sprinkle of sea salt and fresh ground pepper

I started by sauteeing the mushrooms, shallots, red pepper flakes, and onion for a few minutes until the onions started getting soft. I then threw in the garlic and sauteed for a few more minutes. Careful! I hate when garlic burns! I then added the chopped zucchini, let it sit on low for a few more minutes, added the tomatoes, stirred, and left on a very low flame.

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P7280410

 

P7280412

P7280413

Prepping this meal takes no more than 20 minutes, and it is good to sit and simmer away while I do other things to get ready for the rest of the week. The smell of garlic and onions is SO good!

I am off again to meet and greet the family, but I hope to have some fun posts this week on the Boston Harbor Islands, Fig’s restaurant, and some new recipes I am hoping to try soon.

Thanks to all of you who commented on last night’s post on food marketing. I couldn’t sleep last night because I was just going through the grocery aisles in my head, picturing all of the misleading that goes on there. I am definitely not done writing about this topic!

I hope its a gorgeous summer evening wherever you are. 🙂

If they did, I would be doing it tonight! I was searching through On Demand, and there seem to be all sorts of yoga videos, but none for cranky people. 🙂 It was a great great weekend in New Jersey, but I am exhausted and not at all ready to face a crazy week. A hectic Friday led right into a 6 hour drive in torrential downpours, so we arrived at my mom’s house at around midnight. I was too wired to sleep well, and woke up Saturday morning to a ton of work email to tend to and then went straight into helping my sister prep for the party.

I got put in charge of the penne with tomato vodka sauce:

Canned crushed tomatoes

Olive oil to coat the bottom of a big pot

Lots of chopped garlic and about half of an onion

prosciutto di parma (I didn’t see much benefit to adding this, so I would leave it out next time)

tsp oregano

fresh ground black pepper and sea salt

1 shot of vodka

heavy cream to taste (to a big ol pot we added maybe 3/4 cup of cream)

1/4 grated parmesan

Sautee onions and garlic until soft and the garlic is golden, then add everything but the cream and cheese. The cream and cheese can be added at the very end, and we shared the load doing this. I stirred and she poured so that nothing would congeal or get yucky. If the sauce was for my house I would definitely add crushed red pepper flakes because I love spice in my tomato cream sauces, but this was a kid party. We served it over regular penne. I would do whole wheat at home. It was easy peasy, delicious, and a real crowd pleaser.

Simmering

SimmeringWith cream

There was so much to eat and drink at the bbq: my mom’s famous baked lima beans with brown sugar and bacon, potato salad (mom’s famous again!), green salad, fruit salad, sausage and peppers, teriyaki chicken meatballs, rolls, pasta, and these smazing soft pretzels that they buy at a special pretzel bakery.

I had LOTS of orange and yellow peppers

I had LOTS of orange and yellow peppers

There was also a lot of this:

6 types of Harpoon

6 types of Harpoon

On a side note, we live a couple of miles from the Harpoon Brewery, and it has trumped Sam Adams as my favorite local beer! I have been to a couple of charity events at Harpoon, and the fact that they do them for free makes the beer even better to me. I liked their Brown Session Ale and their Crystal Wheat, but give me a classic Harpoon IPA, and I am a happy girl. Remind me to blog someday about Yankee Lobster , an awesome fresh fish restaurant yards from Harpoon. Yankee Lobster roll + Harpoon IPA = summer in my mouth!

Ok back to the bbq post! There was also cake, a Dorah cake with lemon filling for my niece and a chocolate mousse filled cake for my hub’s belated birthday. Sadly, I really don’t like many cakes any more. They are far too sweet for my palate. That’s probably a good thing!

The party colors were pink and orange

The party colors were pink and orange

Overall, I ate well and didn’t stress. I also brought Amazing Grass with me so I was not without my green smoothies. Do you stress about food when you are out of your routine? I came up with a few very simple tips this weekend to make these times easier:

1) Eat as healthily as possible for the situation you are in. Seems like a no brainer, but other people’s homes are not stocked like mine, and rather than freaking out, I make do. I made my smoothies with organic regular milk, something I definitely don’t do at home, but it was fine and tasty for a couple of days.

2) Water water water! When I travel I tend to not drink in the car so I don’t have to stop. This is silly. Dehydration makes you tired and cranky and more likely to feel hunger pangs that aren’t there. Drinking my normal 80 ounces or so kept me feeling good and also kept me from unneccesary snacks.

3) Enjoy! I had a little bit of everything. If I didn’t like it, I didn’t finish it. I waited for at least 30 minutes to go for a seconds plate, and when hungry a few hours after the party, I filled up on fresh cherries to feel full and satisfied. Trying all of the party food felt great, tasted great, and totally kept me from feeling deprived.

4) Don’t overdo the post party “detox”. Other than having lots of water and veggies tonight and doing some stretching, I am going to relax. Traveling to events can be exhausting, and while a little voice was telling me earlier to push myself to run, my knees are sore, and I am just feeling overwhelmed about work. A weekend off won’t undo your exercise/training progress. It will most likely make you better when you return!

I hope you all had a great weekend. I am off to watch “Mondays in the Sun” and to stock my ipod with some new “Notes in Spanish” Spanish podcasts for my walk to and from work. Tomorrow night I am having dinner with friends (I think Ashmont Grill wine club!) and will announce the winner of the Nigella giveaway. Have a GREAT night!

Tags: cake, cooking, Food, party, sauce

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