Farmer's Market

Raleigh and I have been on a bit of a fresh, even organic, food kick lately. Maybe it's all the running because of our half-marathon or just a desire to be more and more healthy, but we've been trying to find more and more ways to eat fresh. There's a Farmer's Market that is on the street where I work. It's every Sunday morning and we do go there often but this week I decided to just get most all of the veggies I needed. It's so good and fresh and all locally grown (and free of pesticides, chemicals, etc). We even bought a basil plant (top left of the picture)!

Another thing that has inspired us to close the gap between where we buy our food and where it comes from is this very informative documentary on food. Click here if you haven't already seen it-- we would highly recommend it! Very interesting and informative. And enjoy a pic of the fresh veggies below. :)

Raleigh's new toy

Well....we recently bought a new mode of transportation which is also Raleigh's new toy. :) It's a Yamaha Vino and is basically a glorified scooter or wanna-be motorcycle (this is my description- I'm sure Raleigh would choose to describe it otherwise). It's been pretty fun. It's just for Raleigh to get to work and back, which is round-trip about 6 miles so really not that far at all. It can only go 40MPH which down here is SLOW. The speed limits on most streets are around 50, 55, so he has to ride in the bike lane most of the time. The good news is that it gets 100 miles to the gallon!

Dinner Marathon

Raleigh and I had the most amazing experience this last week. The company I work for (Ministry Centered Technologies!) bid and bought a dinner for 10 from this Chef Auction we went to last November (it was a fundraiser for the Pendleton Foundation, who helps people with rare diseases who cannot afford the treatment they need to get well). So it was time to redeem it! The chef (Freddie) and his whole team of Chefs were the ones to serve us and we had the whole restaurant to ourselves. The food was incredible- it was a 5 course meal. I think the only course we didn't get a shot of (some/most of these pics are from Jeff) was the first one, mushroom tortollini in white truffle sauce (it was amazing). I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:
The picture above is our second course, the vegetable course, which was absolutely delicious. Mixed greens wrapped in cucumber, an assortment of veggies with goat cheese, then 4 different kinds of heirloom tomatoes cut up into quarters. Below is our group.
Below: 3rd course (pallet cleanser) long-stemmed strawberry dipped in 50-year-aged balsamic vinaigrette.
Below: part of the main course. Inside of these breaded "pears" was some kind of a mashed potato goodness. Basically they were potatoes and really good ones at that.
Below: the main course, which was a trio: Filet Mignon, seared sea bass (my favorite) and chicken marsala. Yes, this was 1 person's serving!!
And onto dessert....this is when all of the chefs (7 I think) brought out 1 dessert per person, plus 1 extra. So each person got their own completely different dessert. We ended up passing them around in a circle so that everyone could try them out. I'm not going to try to explain them :)

Our good friends, Jeff and Ashley, who got to come to the dinner with all of us.
Here's Jeff and Shannon (who sponsored the whole thing) with all the Chefs.
Stupid picture but oh well! This is our company...at least those of us who work in the office. Jeff, Jeff, and me. :)