Weekend Recap: Don't Just Know Your Local Farmers... Party with Them!

This Halloween weekend was filled with great fall festivities including: delicious locally-sourced food, a pick-up soccer game, a polenta experiment, and a long hike. No haunted houses or costumes for me... Here we go!
Friday night, I had a nice little dinner date with this good-lookin' guy...

We ordered the hot and sour soup, a spicy yellow squash dish (with seitan!), and veggie lo mein. The yellow squash dish in the very back of the picture was definitely my favorite! Seitan is an alternative to tofu made from wheat. It has the texture and consistency of roast beef - a bit interesting, but kind of tasty! For dessert, we shared a dish of coconut ice cream that was divine. Yum!
Saturday morning I was up bright and early to run the 13 mile St. Jude course around town. Only 33 days until race day! Eek! I was pretty sore after this run... but I made it! Again, I used those Gu Chomps to fuel only these ones had caffeine! I think that improved my game a bit. I was able to make it to about mile 9 before I felt like I just might die rather than only about 6 miles. Woohoo! Also, I know this picture has been floating around a lot on the internet lately... but I still crack up every time I come across it! It's so true!

Love it. :-)

This weekend was the last Downtown Farmers Market for the season. :-( To celebrate, they held a little party for all the volunteers and vendors which was a lot of fun. So much good food!! Someone made this awe-inspiring potato salad out of sweet potatoes. Mmmm! After filling up with good eats, one of the other volunteers roped Will and I into a round of soccer. Definitely a fun time (even after having just run 13 miles)!

Polenta success!

That evening I cooked up Jenna from eatliverun.com's Baked Polenta with Mushrooms, Gorgonzola Cheese, and Tomato Sauce. (Recipe!) It was really simple to make and quite tasty. Per Will, it might be better to layer the polenta and toppings - I agree! The only tweak I made to the recipe was replacing the Gorgonzola with mozzarella.
To finish the weekend, we went on a long, relaxing hike with Honey at Meeman-Shelby Forest. The leaves are  finally starting to change around here.

Broken bridge? Stand on it!

Honey had lots of fun!

Time for another week spent trying to convince some of the local Vets to eat a little more fruits and veggies and a little less BBQ-smothered pork. :-) Got my work cut out for me!