July 4th and Food Go Hand in Hand

What an amazing July 4th weekend I have had! I credit Boston - they really know how to do this holiday right. After spending a lot of Saturday shopping and mastering my black bean burgers, early Sunday was again spent mostly in the kitchen, preparing a picnic for myself, my roomie Ken, my sister and her roommate. We started with sweets, taking on a cookie recipe that looked and sounded so good that I'd decided literally 30 seconds after reading it last week that I'd soon be making them - CANNOLI COOKIES. I discovered the recipe on The Kitchn and absolutely could not resist them. I love cannolis! The cookie recipe is a sugar cookie darkened with brown sugar and flavored with cinnamon, orange zest, and chopped pistachios - all flavors you find in a cannoli shell. You freeze the dough in rolls so that you can easily slice them into thin rounds, then create little sandwiches with a basic cannoli filling of sweetened ricotta and mascarpone cheese. If that isn't enough, we drizzled (ok, tried to drizzle, it really became more of a smear) melted chocolate on top of them. These cookies are a little labor-intensive because there are a lot of steps - making the dough, letting it freeze, making the cookies, the filling, the chocolate - but they are SO worth it.

Just prior to getting their chocolate smears

We brought the cookies and a fresh fruit salad to our picnic, along with a couple bottles of crisp white wine. My sister made an awesome potato salad (actually the same one my mom made a few weeks ago) and her roommate Brittany took on a very impressive strawberry shortcake. Needless to say we kind of had dessert for dinner. Hey, its a holiday! We found a great little spot in the area called the BU Beach, near the river behind Boston University where there is a footbridge to the riverside. We sat and laughed and ate and drank while the sun set. Around 10pm we packed up and crossed over to the river's edge where we had the most incredible view of the fireworks. Amazing, incredible fireworks like I had never seen. The entire city comes out to see them, crowding the Charles River banks and cheering at the display of colors and lights above them. I have never felt so happy to live here.

To cap off the weekend, we went to Chowderfest! People keep telling me its "Chowda" but that's not it's real name, I checked. You go down to the City Plaza and for $10 you get entrance to the festival and includes all you can eat chowder samples. There were about 8 restaurants featured and each passed out small cups of their signature clam chowder with oyster crackers. You try all of them and then you can vote for your favorite. By the time you've tried each one you've basically had a bowl of soup. I had forgotten how awesome good clam chowder really is. It was a beautiful day and a lot of fun. I voted for the Algonquin Club as best chowder - it was very rich and creamy, with a good amount of clams, and a mild bacon flavor in the background. Most of the other selections were very good with the exception of the House of Blues, not surprisingly. House of Blues is basically an overpriced chain restaurant - good for concerts, not for meals. Their chowder was overly herby and didn't actually taste like clam chowder at all.

All in all, it was a wonderful weekend, particularly for food! Tonight, though, I'm ordering takeout!