From the category archives:

Beer

Local Lovin’…

by agirlandhermutt on October 3, 2011

This weekend marked the 2nd Annual Boston Local Food Festival and I was on-hand to enjoy all the goodies out to offer. Last year it was a beautiful day and I was totally overwhelmed with all the great food. This year the festival was obviously much more popular so it was packed to capacity. Many restaurants came out to participate so the amount of food in one little area was crazy. Add in the farmers, exhibits and performance space and it became insane. You know, in a good way of course. ; )

The Scientist and I had tickets to the 1:30 session of the Local Craft Beer tasting so we decided to grab a quick bite to eat to help soak up all the beer.

Grilled cheese to the rescue. Is there anything as cool as lunch from a food truck?! Nope. I didn’t think so.

We decided to snack on half of a Blue Man Goo, which is a nice mixture of blue cheese and fig spread on raisin pecan bread. It was a great mixture of sweet and salty. I’m glad we only got a half though because a whole of this mix might have been a little too much.

We arrived at starting time at the beer tasting and got to work. They had a showing of about 11 places that were serving beer, wine and mead.

Some of my favorites for the day were:

Cambridge Brewing Company- Their Great Pumpkin Ale is one of the best. It has tons of pumpkin spice and a richness that is just perfect for fall. Loved every sip.

Farnum Hill Ciders- I’m a huge cider fan and this NH cider totally hit the spot. This was a totally new to me place and I was totally wowed. Not only is this cider crisp and super fresh, there are hints of sparkling in several of their offerings that made it feel special.

Blue Hills Brewery- I’ve heard this name over and over and their beer as alluded me. I was so glad we were finally introduced! They had several great offerings but my fave of theirs was the Dunkelweissen, a dark German heffeweizen beer, that was chock full of roasted goodness. I was totally blown away by how smooth and rich this beer was.

The Scientist was a fan too.

My fave brewery of the whole day was no surprise…Pretty Things!

Pretty Things- They had two brews on tap, their Jack D’ Or, which is a “simple table beer”, and Baby Tree. Both are excellent. Both are delicious. Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project, Inc. knows beer and knows how to make it right. On tap=THE BEST.

Free things! I love beer brewery coasters. We collected a few on Saturday!

Then the most magical thing happened. I ran into a fellow blogger…Suki! Beers in hand we chatted about our random sighting of each other in San Francisco and our first meeting at the Healthy Living Summit 2010. Two Suki sightings in one year!

The session started to wind down around 3:30 and we were STARVIN MARVIN. Our last stop for the festival was a local favorite, RedBones BBQ. This Davis Sq favorite is always busy and their food truck was no different. We snuck in for a pulled chicken sandwich and some of their out-of-this-world potato salad to split.

The 2nd year of the Local Food Fest was a success. I’m so happy to say that I live in a city where there is so much local love and so much wonderful local eats/drinks.

CHEERS!

I hope you guys are having a great start to the week! I’m ready for a week of fun starting with book club tonight. Let the reading (and chatting with friends!) begin!

Are there a lot of festivals where you live? Any great fests that you want to brag about that you have attended?!

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A Week of Eats…

by agirlandhermutt on September 30, 2011

Hey party people! Its Friday and I could not be more excited. The Scientist and I have some fun events coming up this weekend and I’m ready to get to them already!

BUT FIRST!

In addition to a mid-week sleepover at The Bates Hotel, I also had some pretty stellar meals throughout the week. I would have shared them with you in my Daily Eats posts, but apparently I get so excited about my meals that I leave my camera wherever it should not be. Eh.

Blue Cheese Stuffed Turkey Burgers
These burgers were perfect to make on Sunday night for dinner and leftovers made for a great lunches for a few days during the week. My burgers are a simple mix of extra lean ground turkey, panko bread crumbs, egg, and a sprinkle of blue cheese. For this meal I paired my burger with “mashed potatoes” which is really just cauliflower with some Laughing Cow cheese. Mmmm…..

Back in June I let you all know about my decision to start eating meat again, which I don’t regret at all. However, I still eat TONS of veggie friendly meals. I would actually say that the majority of my meals are veggie. One of my favorites from this week was on Taco Tuesday.

Tempeh Tacos
This was my first time using tempeh and I was so pleasantly surprised! Tempeh is a fermented soybean product that has a firm texture with a kind of nutty flavor. It easily can be a meat substitute!

I paired my tempeh tacos with my homemade refried beans and a mixture of onions (from the CSA), corn (CSA), grape tomatoes and red wine vinegar.

Isn’t Taco Night just fun to begin with?! What makes these suckers so much fun for dinnah?

Pull it together with some crumbled up tempeh and you have a par-tay!

Last night was an ode to Weight Watchers with a combo of a few of their favorite recipes that they give newcomers to the program. Tried and true.

Baked Herb Chicken
This free-range organic chicken isn’t cooked in a fancy method, but it does come out juicy and delish thanks to some fresh herbs and a little veggie broth. Paired with spicy brown mustard roasted potatoes and fresh veggie soup and you have a complete delish and HEALTHY meal.

This meal was easy to put together, tasty to eat and had plenty of leftovers for lunch. Yee haw!

Oh, and can we talk about that brown bottle?! Oh yea. That is our home brewed beer. *Brush shoulders off*

This ale wasn’t as carbonated as I would like, but it was pretty tasty for our first try. It was unfiltered, but light and tasted similar to a hefeweizen. Kind of citrusy with a touch of bitter. Yay for some beer success!

Don’t worry…in between those kind of standard (but yummy!) meals there was some fun. How can you not have fun when POCKY is involved?!

Pocky is a Japanese biscuit stick with a chocolate or other type of coating on it. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! I had 3 and called it a day.

I hope you all have a great weekend. I’ll be enjoying a beer fest, brunch with an old friend, and some football. Is it 5p yet?!

It is almost OCTOBER! What is your #1 goal for the new month?!

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Beer and Pizza!

by agirlandhermutt on September 15, 2011

Just like many other runners around the country, there is some preparing for a race going down in the AGAHM hood. Eh. Its not me. Did I trick ya?! The Scientist is gearing up for his first half marathon. I’m super excited for him!

Last night was supposed to be around a 5 mile run outside for him. He was going to run and I was going to ride my bike alongside of him signing the theme to Rocky as loud as possible. If that doesn’t make you want to run faster, I don’t know what would!

Instead we both got caught in traffic on the way home and it ended up being around 7:20 when I walked through the front door. Ugh. No way jose was that run/bike ride happening.

We did the next best thing…pizza and beer!

We BOTTLED beer and made TORTILLA pizza! Tricked ya again. Come on! Remember I have that whole healthier living journey going on?!

Tortilla pizza isn’t an Earth shattering idea but it is one that I’ve been meaning to try. As I walked in the door later than planned I was in the mood for something savory, cheesy and not a meal I would regret later.

Hello Tortilla Pizza!

I started with the basics for the first pizza. Just some good ol’ tomatoes and onions from my CSA haul and a little mozzarella cheese.

Spray the tortilla with some cooking spray and bake for about 4-5 minutes at 350 degrees.

Once the tortilla has a little bit of crisp going on, bring out of the oven and pile on the veggies. For my first attempt I used the above goodies (plus a few tiny dollops of ricotta cheese!) and drizzled with a smidge of EVOO and fresh ground pepper.

Place back in oven and bake until the cheese has melted and tortilla starts to get browned along the edges. For crispier crust, let it bake longer.

Slice and enjoy!

I was totally surprised at not only how tasty this pizza was, but also how FILLING it was. It definitely hit the spot for that comfort food need and in record time.

Nutrition rundown…

While The Scientist and I noshed on some gourmet pizza and sufficiently complained about traffic, we also started the 2nd stage of our beer brewing adventure. The brewing started a few weekends ago when Hurricane Irene was showing her ugly side to us. According to our directions the beer was ready to be bottled and set aside to let the carbonation process start.

The keg was brought up from the basement and the bottles were sanitized.

Our system was that I added the sugar to the bottles, The Scientist filled the bottles and I made sure to get the sugar dissolved. It was the perfect assembly line.