healthy living summit Archives - Preppy Runner

Just one more HLS post, promise.

After all the Official HLS stuff was over, I went up to Meghann’s room for a little cocktail hour with some ladies.

As the conference planner, she got a suite with a pretty sweet view.

Roomie love: Anne, me, Ashley and Gretchen

After our little cocktail hour, a group of us headed over to EVOO, an award-winning Cambridge restaurant.

Some of the lovely Chobani ladies were our hosts for the evening. Just a note here that I can’t tolerate a ton of dairy but I attended this dinner because I really like the Chobani brand and the ladies hosting the dinner.

Like the lovely Emily, their director of consumer engagement.

I also like wine. One of the wines they had to pair with the dinner was Sancerre, which I love.

Each course included Chobani in some creative way. The first course was an heirloom tomato salad with a yogurt gelee. The gelee texture made the yogurt taste almost like cheese.

The next course was a lobster succotash with vanilla Chobani. Lobster is one of my favorite foods by far, so I was really excited to see lobster on the menu, but I wasn’t crazy about any other part of this course.

What’s a blogger dinner without a little photo intermission? Oh hey Heather.

Our main course was Seared Yogurt and Spice Sous Vide Lamb Loin with Crisp Eggplant and Raita. The veal was really tender, and the eggplant was delicious. I don’t think I’ve met many fried foods I didn’t like, hence the reason I needed to start this blog…

We finished the meal with a nectarine-basil crisp with frozen berry yogurt. I’m typically way more of a savory person than a sweet person, but I finished this before Heather, sitting next to me, had barely made a dent in hers.

This was a special menu created for us by Chef Peter McCarthy, and I love that he did everything with such a light touch. The yogurt was never overwhelming in any of the dishes, but accented the other flavors in the dishes.

Thanks to Chobani and thanks to all these lovely ladies for such a fun dinner. (And thanks to Ashley for the photo.)

If you could eat a meal centered around one sort of food, what kind of food would you pick? OR if you could have one chef design a special menu, which chef? I’d pick Jose Andres; I was pretty obsessed with both Jaleo and Oyamel (long live their beef tongue tacos) in D.C.

I’m baaaaack.

Sorry for the lack of blogging yesterday, but I was busy from the second I got up to the second I went to sleep and the Internet was limited.

So let’s go back to Friday. I arrived in Philly around 6pm, dropped my stuff and headed out to the HLS opening cocktail party at Reading Terminal Market.

One of the first people I saw was Heather, my HLS roomie from last year. I love this girl, and I’m so excited for her future tiny sneakers.

Roomies before props.

Roomies AFTER props. [photos via Anne]

My camera died pretty much immediately after this, but let’s just say I had a good time catching up with new and old friends.

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After the party, Ashley and I walked to Paulie’s Pizza to get a little more fuel for our long run the next day. I’ve never had pizza the night before a long run, but it worked out just fine.

We went to sleep a bit after 11 and were up at 4:30 for our long run.

“Why are we running marathons?” I whispered in the dark as we got ready by the light of our iPhones. I didn’t get a good answer to why not, so out I went.

We went down to the lobby at 5 to meet a group of about 20 other crazy people who also had long runs scheduled.

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Yeah. It was still dark.

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We ran along Kelly Drive by the water.

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Past boathouses

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And were almost back towards the hotel when we saw Evan. After my epic race last weekend, my legs were exhausted, and I had a really hard time running yesterday. But nearly 14 miles later, we finally made it back to the hotel for breakfast. My camera ate the photos (?), but it was sponsored by Attune and included lots of yummy cereal and fruit.

After two great sessions, this happened.

Cynthia, Ashley and I spoke about how to make friends using the Internet.

I don’t know what I was saying here, but I didn’t drop the mic or vomit on the table, so I consider my panel a success. There’s definitely things I’d do differently next time around, but I’m proud to have my second big public speaking event under my belt.

We were the session right before lunch, so I think people were really just listening for “Okay, it’s lunchtime.” I mean, I know I was. It meant I was done and could leave the stage 🙂

We finally heard those words and bolted outside for lunch, which included quinoa salad and sandwiches.

Ashley was apparently a little hungry.

The sandwiches were all on donated Great Harvest bread, and were really filling.

Kath and I split some (dough) balls.

Speaking of Kath, she totally rocked our afternoon. One of her readers shared some Dogfish beer with her, and she shared it with the table.

Which made Monica’s already-interesting discussion about blogger safety even more interesting.

So, it may have taken us a few people to open the bottle.

But it was well worth it.

Gretchen, Tina, me, Ashley and Kath

After our mini cocktail hour, we decided it was time for real cocktail hour and went to vintage, a cute wine bar near the hotel.

Hey Beth!

I <3 these girls. Katy’s presentation was great, obviously, but even more fun was geeking out over HTML, widgets and social media monitoring over a few cocktails.

I also love wine.

We moved over to a whiskey bar called Time before heading over to El Vez for dinner. (Yes, from one place named Time to another.)

My cousin Leanne came to dinner! She put her little twins down to sleep and met us out for some drinks and food. I don’t think she was too overwhelmed by all the bloggers, and she seemed like she had a good time.

It was so great to see her–I used to take the train up to Philly to visit her and go out when I was in college, but for some reason I’ve only been to Philly once since I graduated college. I met a million of her friends back then, so it was fun to introduce her to some of mine.