Ready to Rock #HLS12

We’re ready to rock!

Rock the summit – HLS 2012, BABY!

I’m a little obsessed with the headbands that FiveBamboo sent for the swag bags.

How cute are they?! LOVE

I arrived in Boston at 10:00am, and after a quick cab ride with my cab buddy (Mindy), we were put straight to work.

Umm… that was only a quarter of the boxes we had to open today. Swag is definitely something we will not be short of!

We met Heather, Julie, and the rest of the Healthy Living Summit planning team, and we got to work setting the bags up and prepping for stuffing.

We got a few items in before we decided food was a priority and that it was time for a lunch break. We hopped on the (free!) Hyatt shuttle to Harvard Square and got lunch at a cute little place called Tory Row.

It was a small place that was jam packed on the inside, but had enough free tables outside to seat our large party. Our table started with two hummus platters.

The hummus had just a hint of lemon to it that made it really refreshing.

For my meal I ordered the grilled chicken sandwich, but was a little disappointed. The flavor and taste was there, but it’s never a good sign when the chicken is less than half of the size of the bun.

I stole a few bites of Heather’s sweet potato pizza, which was delicious and reminded me of something I would make at home.

The stuffing crew.

After lunch we wandered across the street to Tealuxe

And I ordered the equivalent of a green tea smoothie. It was very refreshing and provided that nice afternoon pick me up I was after.

Our shuttle back to the hotel.

Back to stuffing!

We had a ton of volunteers that made the whole bag stuffing process fly. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU to everyone who came out to help today. Without you, Julie, Heather and I might still be in the room stuffing bags – we owe you all big time.

Check these babies out! I’m pretty sure we couldn’t fit anything else in there if we tried.

The bag stuffing took us well into the late afternoon. I managed to check-in to my room before we headed to dinner and had a chance to check out this gorgeous view of Boston.

I wasn’t really sure how the night was going to play out, so I didn’t make any plans for dinner and decided to go with the flow. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one – there was a good group of us without dinner plans and a super organized Kristin (love that girl!) who was willing to throw something together. She did a search on Yelp for the highest rated restaurants in the area and discovered Russell House near the top. She called, made a reservations, and at 7 on the dot we were walking through the front door.

Cheers!

I started with a glass of the cheapest cab sav on the menu.

Inside, Russell House was a trendy gastropub with a menu that covers everything from pork belly to pizza to lobster sliders. The menu looked so good that Kristin had a hard time deciding what we wanted. When we discovered we both wanted the same things, we decided to order them all and just split it. Works for me.

There was the mushroom and cheese dip with flatbread.

There were more mushrooms, than cheese which is always a good sign. The mushrooms were rich and thick, but fabulously delicious.

Kale salad with pine nuts.

The salad was lightly dressed and very bitter (as kale usually is when it isn’t cooked). I still found it very refreshing ( I strangely love raw kale), but should have been warned away from the toast with anchovies. I thought it was just blue cheese at first – BIG mistake on my part.

Honey roasted brussels sprouts

By far the best dish on the table, but how could you not love roasted brussels sprouts?!

And last, but not least, the two mini lobster sliders/

Don’t ask how much each mini slider was – too much for the size of it. I loved having lobster and how cute the mini sandwich was, but I’m not sure it was worth the price for how tiny it was – I wanted more!

The big joke was that we ordered the left side of the menu for dinner. I can see that.

Throughout the weekend members of the planning team have arranged mini-mingle sessions to encourage HLS-ers to meet-up outside of the summit. Tonight’s first mini-mingle was planned by the lovely Alicia and kicked off at J.P. Licks

Love J.P. Licks! I’ve only been here once (for the first Healthy Living Summit), but I remember being a fan.

I ordered the oatmeal cookie ice cream cone and enjoyed every bite.

Thank you to everyone who came out and helped kick Healthy Living Summit 2012 off with a bang!

Whoa, what a day! And the weekend’s just getting started – the real fun starts tomorrow.

Good Night!!!