I was really excited this weekend to attend the Boston Local Food Festival! If you were in the Boston area, I assume you were there too, since the place was packed. I thought there was a good mix of vendors selling produce and food products, along with some booths set up for education about locally grown food. I wasn’t able to take any pictures, but you’re in luck because I know a blogger who did a nice write up on the event.

There were lots of samples, but my favorite was edamame hummus from Gourmet Recipes for One. I don’t always enjoy edamame, but here it was mixed with such wonderful ingredients. There were not that many vendors there with recipes, but her site has plenty of interesting ones.

While the festival showed a lot of support for local agriculture and restaurants which use local food, it’s just as important to demonstrate how to use locally grown food in their homes. And that’s what I try to do here as well, by showing you that an amateur cook like me can take quality ingredients and make them into a meal. I will mark my calendar for this event next year!

Last week I talked about how much I enjoyed spending Sunday afternoons cooking meals for the week. But this past Sunday, I was given the opportunity to see my first professional football game, and visit Gillette stadium for the first time! It was a great experience to be in such a fun atmosphere on a beautiful fall day, and of course enjoy the excitement of a Patriots win.

It’s vacation week for me, and I am going to take time to smell the beach plums. I’ll be out and about around New England, hitting some beaches and farmer’s markets. I’ve had so much fun this July and August, and am ready for one last hurrah before the reality of fall.

I will be doing plenty of cooking and eating on my ‘staycation’, and I’ll be back next Monday to share all my latest adventures!

Thanks for all the great suggestions on what birthday cake I should make for my sister. She has selected carrot cake, and I finally picked a recipe. This is most definitely a “real” cake recipe with flour, butter, sugar, the works. I think the carrots are just in the recipe to make you feel better.

A galette recipe on Smitten Kitchen also caught my eye. I didn’t know what a galette was either, but it calls for more flour and butter plus 3 different kinds of cheese and zucchini for good measure.

Finally, I saw this article on 101 things to grill and was intrigued by many of the suggestions. Grilled beets, grilled bok choy, even fancy grilled cheese. They all look good!

Whatever you do this weekend, enjoy, and I’ll see you Tuesday with a full report.

Lately, my cooking hasn’t exactly been inspirational. But my summer class is almost over, and I promise that the blog will feature more interesting and seasonal recipes. I plan to do quite a bit of cooking over 4th of July weekend with my family. And that’s where I need your help.

Just last week, a few people ask me which type of wraps I use. I really like the Joseph’s brand Flax, Oat Bran, and Whole Wheat lavash, which I find in the deli section of Shaw’s and Stop & Shop. The company is based in Lawrence, MA, so I think they also count as local food.

I use them plain, like in this LOVE wrap, and toasted like the Eggplant Cheese wrap I posted last week. I have also used them as a base for pizza. This time, I used them to make nachos! Remember when I made refried beans? Well, I had just a small container left in the freezer. I cut the wrap into triangles, and baked them on a cookie sheet for 5 minutes. Then, I topped the “nachos” with the defrosted beans and some shredded cheese and baked them for 5 more minutes. I am not going to claim these were anywhere near the best nachos ever, but they did fill the craving with food I already had in the house.

The past month has really flown by! In the end, it was actually pretty easy to eat vegetarian for a month. I was inspired to try some new recipes for easy lunches and dinners, like the Spelt Veggie Burgers and the Curried Cashew Spread. I found plenty of good options at restaurants, and although my choices seemed more limited at take-out places, I ended up saving money by preparing my own quick meals instead. It wasn’t difficult at all to watch others enjoy meat; it didn’t really affect me. My only real craving right now is sushi.

It was somewhat complicated to explain to other people why I was choosing to eat vegetarian this month. I am not ethically opposed to killing animals for the purpose of food. I believe that meat can be part of a well balanced diet. But I do feel inspired to support farmers who treat the animals humanely by feeding them appropriate diets, allowing them to grow at normal rates, and raising them in an environmentally conscious manner. By not eating meat this month, I was not supporting the factory farming industry.

So what’s next? (And no, I don’t plan to eat a big burger for lunch!) My goal is to spend my grocery dollars in a manner which supports farmers who are doing the right thing. I am not exactly sure where I’ll be purchasing meat, so for the moment, it’s off my grocery list. At restaurants, I will continue to choose the vegetarian option. But technically I will be a flexitarian, and I will be eating meat on occasion. This month taught me that I don’t need to rely on meat in order to create a healthy meal plan. With a little creativity, I can do better.

Tomorrow I will recap some great meals from Memorial Day weekend!

I am mixing it up today, getting ready for a long weekend! I hope to be spending three lovely days soaking up the sun, I mean, applying my SPF at regular intervals while enjoying time outside.

I honestly thought that this challenge would be more difficult, but it’s turned out to be much easier than I expected. But there is one topic I’d like to talk about today – what to do when you’re hungry, and don’t have a vegetarian meal prepared. Some of my favorite take-out meals contain meat: the Greek salad with grilled chicken from the sub shop down the street, the brown rice tuna sashimi at Whole Foods, even the turkey sub from Subway. I don’t do take-out often, but this is a busy month, and a few nights I found myself scrambling to find new options.

One night, I made a salad at the Whole Foods salad bar (since the vegetarian sushi was wholly unsatisfying) and another night, I just came home and had a grilled cheese. So far this month I have brought my lunch to work each day, but I do have an emergency can of vegetable soup stashed. Of course there are a lot of vegetarian options when eating out, but I have found that while eating vegetarian at home is easy, I have to concentrate harder when I am out.

But overall, I found that I’ve done even more meal preparation than usual this month. That’s been good for both my health and my wallet. I feel more inspired to create healthy meals and have saved money along the way, and that’s an unexpected but wonderful benefit.