Tuesday, May 24, 2011

92.9FM Cereal Fest

Each year, 92.9FM puts on an event called Earth Fest that takes place at the Hatch Shell along Boston's Charle's River. The time that I went with my husband, I recall watching a couple great bands and having a decent time. The next year, I went with a girl friend who introduced me to the secret world of the Whole Foods vendor pavilions.

Instead of watching bands, we acquired dozens of free samples including about 10 granola bars, 8 sample boxes of cereal, a SoDelicious coconut milk ice cream sandwich, some gross fizzy water, cups of Pom Wonderful, and I'm sure much much more.

Adam had been holding out on me. He either knew that I'd be too preoccupied with free samples and would disrupt his concert-going, or he cared so little about free samples that he forgot to mention this to me.

Once you are awakened to the existence of the vendor wonderland that sits down the path from the Hatch Shell, you can no longer turn back. Earthfest 2011 featured Atomic Tom, Sponge, OKGo, and the lead singer of Live.

We may or may not have heard one OKGo song from a distance.

Meanwhile, on the FUN side of the path, it was a beautiful day in Boston

 


This was very lucky, as it has been raining for 40 days and 40 nights. Having not thought this through, I was wearing my hippie cloth shoes in the muddy mess that was the vendor field area



 Given that my Toms are more important to me then my sanitation, it didn't take long before I retired them to my (free) (new) Whole Foods shopping bag


The Nature's Path bag is important to acquire early on so you can put all your other free goods inside of it

 

The contents of the bag this year were a little shabby in comparison to last years, but the amount of samples we acquired from the vendors made up for it

  

  

HUMMUS VILLAGE

 

 

 

By the end of the day I had acquired about four Lara Bars, two packs of tortillas, 8 boxes of cereal, a Banana, two Cliff bars, 2 fruit rolls, one Olivia's salad, a mini hummus and two packets of seeds to grow lavender and basil. Tragically, I lost a second banana to a mud pit.



 Needless to say, Adam and I will be eating cereal and quesadillas all week.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

That's a horse of a different varietal!

I recently had the privilege of traveling to wine country, Long Island to attend an (amazing) wedding. Rather than spend our time at outlet malls or mini golfing in our down time before the ceremony, we wisely chose to tour a winery.

After fueling up on HP Desket Printer Pancakes at the Holiday Inn Express, we went to the nearby Baiting Hollow Farm Vineyard



 
 
In addition to being a lovely winery with a nice, large tasting area, they were a horse rescue farm! Who could ask for anything more? Several of the wines that I tasted helped saved horses. Jealous?

 
 
I tried both the Angel and the Mirage wines. Both wines were named for rescue horses that were presently on their farm. Mmm horse wine. I actually didn't love their wines, but their horses are another story

 

The tour person explained how they acquired each horse. Some were found starving in their former owner's backyards; some were "retiring" race horses that were going to be killed ("We have another name for retired horse: Babies". Apparently horses sometimes stop racing around age 4).

And they had mini horses! These were taken from leprechaun villages.

They also had sexy emo horses

 

I spy with my little eyes, something that is horrible. Can you find it?