Playing catch up

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

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

fruit, yogurt, and granola buffet

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

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