South End

Boston’s first Food Truck Festival was certainly a meaty affair! The South End Open Markets made room for a caravan of food trucks serving, for the most part,  a meat-lover’s dream.  There were many vendors including Speed’s Hot Dogs, M & M Ribs, the Sausage Guy, and another hot dog truck. The lines for all of these were enormously long. Luckily, the line at Grillo’s Pickles was short, short enough for me to return twice for their spicy, crispy pickles.

These pickles are pretty amazing, though I would love it if they served whole pickles, deli-style.

The line was also short at another favorite of mine, Equal Exchange Cafe. Their nutty, buttery roast is always delicious and always doing good. So my day started off with pickles and coffee, the breakfast of champions!

The Food Truck festival was a great idea in theory, it is an event that might have been better saved for cooler weather and laid out a little better so to avoid maddening, crisscrossing lines. More veggie options would have been nice too. I think I went into the event expecting it to be like the                 FoodBuzz Festival street food event, which was a little off. At any rate, I was hungry, so we headed over to the market part of the open markets.

I admired some of the jewelry and other wares for sale, including these dog bowls made out of old wine boxes. You know that I will have one of these for my someday dog.

I spent some time drooling over Marie Galvin’s stunning hats and fascinators wishing I had an occasion to wear one to.

And then we got down to food business. You can always count on The Herb Lyceum at Gilson’s to have fresh, amazing food. We shared the Herbal Spring Roll, a crunchy fresh roll that feature’s Gilson’s fresh herbs and comes with a flavorful peanutty sauce.

We also shared their BLT which paired salty bacon with chewy focaccia, perfect summer tomatoes, lettuce, and a bit of mayo.

The South End Open Markets always start the day off right. After, we did some Trader Joe’s shopping for the week, especially to get the hubby well stocked since I am going to be working from my mom’s in NJ later in the week while she recovers from surgery. Prior to that I have a Healthworks blogger event, a lunch at Sibling Rivalry, and lots of work to do. . . it’s going to be a busy one!

Now for the giveaway! I know many of you have been reading blogs that were participating in the Athenos “Change for the Feta” month in July and loving all of the feta creations. Athenos has offered one lucky reader a coupon for free feta plus a neat little salad pod for taking salads on the go. All you have to do is leave a comment letting me know your favorite or most unique way to use feta. If you are on Twitter and not following me, please go ahead and follow. And if you have a blog, please link back to this post. And if you haven’t “Liked” Travel, Wine, and Dine on Facebook, I would love it if you would, thank you!

I would add feta to my recent tomato pie. I made it with blue cheese, but I definitely have friends who would prefer feta, and this would be a perfect dish for entertaining.

The giveaway winner will be announced on Friday. Good luck everyone!