I first came across the Cookie Monstah truck in 2013 (!!), pre kids, when I was working downtown. These days, they have expanded to brick and mortar locations in Danvers, Swampscott, Burlington and (just recently) Needham. Aaaaannnnnd, their truck is back on the Greenway, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

They have over 20 flavors of cookies and the cookie ice cream sandwich combinations are endless! Above is the “Slim Shady” – vanilla ice cream sandwiched inside two m&m cookies. Order off the menu or make a custom creation of your own. They’ve even expanded to “quakes”, cookies and ice cream blended together to hit the spot this summer!

A favorite in our house is the “Peanut Buttah Blast” – Reese’s cookies with Reese’s peanut butter cup ice cream. All the cookies are made from scratch, using the finest ingredients, and the ice cream is from Richardson’s. How can you go wrong?

Back in the height of the pandemic, when people weren’t having parties, our neighbor graciously surprised us with a socially distant baby shower, complete with a visit from the Cookie Monstah truck. Such a fun idea! People can stop by and grab one to go and wave hello, or sit outside (socially distant) and enjoy some ice cream on the front lawn – perfect for all comfort levels.

For more information on the Cookie Monstah truck, click here. Make sure to sign up or their loyalty program too!

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Boston is a great city, especially in the summer! Addressy contacted me to share my #postalcodepride and talk about why Boston is such a fun place. I love checking out cool new shops in Boston, just check out some of my Tuesday water cooler posts! But sometimes you just can’t get get out to that store or you’re just too busy. If you’re like me, most of my shopping is done online, and UPS is at my home nearly every day (ahem, Amazon addiction). Enter Adressy.com address verification, you can get nearly anything delivered to your home in Boston (or beyond!). Where are some of your favorite shops?

Here are my “Top 5 Things” I love about Boston:

• Faneuil Hall, North End, The Greenway, Boston Public Market

There is so much to love about the Faneuil Hall area. Faneuil Hall Marketplace itself is a bit of a tourist trap, but the Rose Kennedy Greenway is a nice oasis from the crowds. There are tables and chairs set up and lawn chairs on the grass. There are tons of great food trucks in the area that are not to be missed: The Cod Squad (Captain Marden’s), The Bacon Truck, Baja Taco Truck, Cookie Monster and the Bibim Box can all be found at the intersection of Milk and Kilby Street during the weekdays (check out their websites for exact days). On the weekends, there is a Greenway Open Market, where local artisans come and sell their goods. The spread out all down The Greenway on Saturdays and every 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month, May through October. If you have kids, take a ride on The Greenway Carousel for just $3 a ride. Boston Public Market  is a year round source for locally sourced groceries. Stop in for a juice from Mother Juice or cool off with a Crescent Ridge ice cream cone. Take your lunch and eat at one of the communal tables or pick up some fresh seafood for dinner. Head over to the North End for some of the best cannolis and Italian food. For cannolis, do you stop in at Mike’s or Modern? And don’t forget to stop at an ATM, because they only take cash! Did you know that they just opened up a zipline that runs down The Greenway? “The Z” is a 220 ft zipline that can carry one or two passengers, giving them a unique view of the city (at 30ft above the ground!). Riders can buy tickets for $8 at the corner of Clinton Street and Surface Road (right across from Faneuil Hall Marketplace). Don’t have kids? Head over to the Trillium Beer Garden, located at Atlantic and High Street for a glass or wine or a cold beer. They’re open Wednesday – Friday, 4pm-10pm and Saturday – Sunday, 11am – 10pm.

• Lawn on D

The Lawn on D is a 2.7 acre outdoor event space located in South Boston. Grab some friend and play some bocce or ping pong. Feel like you need to take your office outside? They’ve got free wifi. Head over to their website for a calendar of events, including free music, ticketed events or even a cornhole tournament.

• Farmers Markets

This is my favorite part of the summer! Some of my favorites are Copley Square (Tuesday and Friday), Dewey Square (Tuesday and Thursday), Union Square (Saturday), and Brookline (Thursday). Don’t forget your cooler bags!

• Rooftop pools

Can’t get to the beach? Head over to one of the city’s rooftop pools to cool off. The Colonnade is open to the public during the week for $45 a day. Get amazing views of the Back Bay while sipping cocktails or dining al fresco. Certainly the place to see and be seen. The Revere has an indoor AND  an outdoor pool on the roof (21+). It’s slightly more affordably priced at $20 during the week and $30 on the weekend. Need something outside of the city? The Hotel Indigo in Newton has a great outdoor pool with luxury cabanas, fire pits and food and beverage service.  They offer weekday day passes for $30 per person.

• Boston Harbor

There are so many things to do on the water! Hop on a Harbor Cruise or perhaps go on a whale watch. Feeling adventurous, try out Codzilla, a speedboat that makes hairpin turns at 40mph! Don’t forget your raincoat because you are sure to get wet! Why sit in traffic, hop on a water taxi for $12 one way! Looking to get out of the city for the day, try one of the Boston Harbor Islands: Lovell’s Island, Peddocks Island, Georges Island or Spectacle Island. Perfect for history buffs or those just looking to enjoy the outdoors!

For more information on Adressy, check out their website: https://www.addressy.com/

Adressy is software program that automatically confirms your address when you put in your house number and zipcode when shopping online.

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I am always on the hunt for a GREAT breakfast sandwich. We went to the Maynard Farmers’ Market this past fall and had brunch at the Morning Salute food truck. The farmers’ market is located on Main Street next to Mill Pond. It runs every Saturday from 9am – 1pm beginning the last Sat in June and running through the first weekend in October.

The food truck is owned by Billerica native, Rob Whitten, who is also an Army vet. The menu is pretty straight forward with about 8 items. All of the breakfast sandwiches are served on a Portuguese roll, which are my favorite.

I order “the captain” which is a pork breakfast sausage, muenster cheese and two fried eggs on a Portuguese roll. The sandwich is $6 and will definitely keep you full until your next meal. Super simple ingredients, really great flavor profile. Check out their website and follow them on social media to find out where they will be next!

Morning Salute

http://www.morningsalute.com/

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January is all about catching up on posts from the end of the year. With the holidays and the new year, time just flew! So back at the end of November, Leah, Dori and I headed over to the Harpoon Brewery for the Dundee VI Brawl at the Hall. People packed in to taste meat pies made by local celebrity chefs. Previous winners are as follows: 1) Sam Monsour 2) Chin Kuo (Saus) 3) Samuel Jackson (KO Pies) 4) Chin Kuo (Saus) 5) Current champs, Mike DiSabatino and James DiSabatino (Roxy’s).

In the spirit of competition, they had some pretty amusing chef bios. Here’s just one:

Ryan “The Pork Peddler” McGuire was born on the mean streets of Cape Cod. At an early age he realized that he did not have a jump shot, so his only chance for fame and dollar bills was to sling pork out of the back door of his mother’s kitchen. With bigger aspirations than pork on the Cape, he grabbed his brother Kevin “The Sloppy Sailor” McGuire on a journey to make the greatest pork meat pie known to man. With a slab of pork in one hand and a dark and stormy in the other, they have achieved greatness peddling the world’s best pork pies. They will be entering the meat pie octagon with a mariachi band in tow playing their theme music of “momma gonna knock you out” so everyone knows how serious they really are about knocking out the competition with their pork.

Everyone got a score card that the chefs marked off when you went up to get a pie. The event was really well run, you never really waited in line too long for a pie.

First up the Shepard’s Pie Meat Pie – Stewed lamb and beef, smoked corn gravy, habanero and jack cheesy mash, black garlic ketchup. When I think of lamb, I think gamey. This wasn’t at all and it had a little bit of a kick to it! Some serious comfort food!

Shrimp, Oyster and Crab Gumbo. All the pie crust were made by KO Pies, and this one was perfect. The filling was so flavorful!

“Lobster Rangoon” with butter poached lobster, allium cream cheese and sweet and sour sauce. I think that people were wowed by the ingredients of this pie. It was creamy but the mint and sweet and sour sauces really kicked the pie up a notch.

Al Pastor with pineapple, mushroom and chicharron. This was delicious, well balance flavors and I loved the sweetness.

North Shore Three Way – Roast seasoned beef, American cheese, brown bbq sauce, kewpie and crispy onions.The filling here was tender and the sauce was tasty (but a little too heavy if you must ask).

The Clam Alamb a Ding Dong – a baked stuffed clam pie  with chowder sauce. I didn’t really get a clam taste on this one, garlic overpowered this pie, but don’t get me wrong, we ate this one all up!

The Steakbomb Sub – Short rib, pastrami rub mornay, whipped salami, peppers and onions. The meat was peppery and flavorful and the sauce was thick and creamy – a really well done pie.

Crawfish Pie – Fritos, jack cheese, smoked monsanto corn, essential andouille oil. I love fritos on anything nd this was just perfect. There was a nice crunch and a little bit of a kick – another flavorful pie.

The Pork Hat Pie. I liked the pickle addition, it gave this pie a little but of a punch and the mashed potatoes inside were delicious.

The Chili Mac Smack – with short rib chili, tallegio mac n’ cheese and a wild mushroom salsa. This was one of my top choices – the mac n’ cheese was delicious and the mushrooms melded really well here.

The Ruben – with swiss cheese mornay, mustard, pastrami and kraut. You know Chef Nookie from Commonwealth was going to go big or go home, and he brought his A game with his pastrami pie. It was a like the perfect Jewish deli sandwich in a pie – the pastrami was well seasoned and while I generally don’t love kraut, this was a really nice addition to the pie – subtle.

Chicken and Quinoa Meatball Pie – with Chinese garlic sauce, spicy mayo and spicy peanuts. Kate Holowchik was the only female chef in the competition tonight, and she brought it with her chicken meatballs. While I generally shy away from chicken meatballs in general, these were really flavorful and the perfect texture. The pie would have been perfect on its own, even without the sauce.

Check out the fun photos from the night, courtesy of The Danger Booth! Congrats to all the participants – all the pies were delicious! The winner of the battle was Chin Kuo with his Lobstah Rangoon pie. Nice work Saus for bringing home the championship for the third time!

Participants included:

Samuel Jackson, Michael Serpa, Chris Douglass, Mike and James DiSabatino, Steve “Nookie” Postal, Ryan and Kevin McGuire, Kate Holowchik, Matt Drummond, Dan Amighi, Chin Kuo, Samuel Monsour, and Nicholas Dixon.

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I stopped for lunch at Cemita’s at #Seaportsmorg and sat outside at one of the picnic tables. Cemita’s is just one of the restaurants serving at these cute little outdoor pods at the South Street Seaport Smorgasburg location. They make delicious barbacoa tacos – pictured above. The line was long at lunchtime, but it was worth the wait.

A cemita is a common street food from Puebla, Mexico. Its 10 layers include bean spread, mayo, lettuce, onions, tomato, avocado, oaxaca cheese, chipotle, and your choice of southern fried chicken, carnitas, chicken tinga, and barbacoa. We chose the barbacoa and we were in love at first bite. While the sandwich is certainly hard to get your mouth around, it is delicious – there are so many layers of flavors, it’s hard to pick out what I like best about the sandwich. I think it’s the melding of all the flavors that does it – but if I had to say, the cheese and the avocado really make the sandwich for me.

Cemitas

Smorgasburg at South Street Seaport

Fulton Street between South and Front

http://cemitasnyc.com

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Whenever I am in New York I loved to go to the Brooklyn Flea. Not only do they have fun finds but they always have great food. This time we tried some new places.

Lonestar empire was our first stop – their slow cooked Texas style brisket looked too good to pass up. It was everything we hoped it would be, a little smokey, super tender…all kinds of deliciousness.

Next stop was Sunday Gravy where they had so many good things to choose from, it was hard to pick a favorite.

It was between the chicken parm, the eggplant parm and the meatball – we went with the meatball and it was super tasty, smothered with red sauce and parmesan cheese on a bun that felt a little like an after thought, but very good over all.

I’m horrible, because the place that we got this from has escaped me, but this sweet corn grilled brown rice ball was delicious! I love finding new places at the flea!

What’s your favorite spot at the flea?

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Wow, this summer flew by! And per usual, some posts just get away from you! In July, we went to the Revere National Sand Sculpting Festival. We hopped onto the blue line and headed to the beach. The sculptures were amazing! For more information about the festival, you can check out the website here.

In addition to the great sculptures, the next big draw are the food trucks! We were able to check out some new ones that we don’t normally see.

Teri-Yummy offers teriyaki bowls served with rice and vegetables. You can choose from a variety of meats including: chicken, beef, shrimp, tofu or a combination plate.

After lunch we treated ourselves to a frozen hoagie. The truck opened in 2011 and serves hand scooped ice cream (Chilly Cow) into freshly baked cookies. We had the mint chip with chocolate chip cookies – YUM!! Really great treat on a super hot and sunny day (ok, it’s great even on not sunny days).

As we were heading out, the sopapillas were up and running (they had a rough start). So how could we leave without trying one right? Papi’s Stuffed Sopapillas are hand made to order. Never heard of a sapodilla? It’s a type of fried pastry or quick bread. The deep fried dough puffs up with a hollow pocket in the center, making it perfect for fillings! They offer both sweet and savory sopapillas. We had the bulgogi kimchi fusion – made with spicy Korean rib eye steak, sweet chili cream cheese, and kimchi cabbage and scallion slaw. A little on the messy side, but really quite delicious. I love re-imagined ways to serve my favorite dish, bulgogi!

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I’ve become so used to pizza that can be made in 90 seconds, it seemed insane when they told me that my pizza would take 10 minutes (wait for my pizza? What?!?!) …when really, the insane part is that 10 minutes for a meal isn’t really all that long. In a world of 140 characters and on demand everything, I realize that I have become very impatient. We ate lunch at the South Street Seaport (#Seaportsmorg) outlet of Pizza Moto, where they make Neopolitan style pizzas in handmade ovens.

My 10″ pie comes with tomato, fresh mozzarella & mushroom. You can really taste the quality in the ingredients. Other choices are margherita with tomato, basil, fresh mozzarella and olive oil or pepperoni with tomato and fresh mozzarella. I was starving so I devoured this pizza on my own, but it could certainly be enough for two!

Pizza Moto

Fulton Street (Between South and Front Street)

http://pizzamoto.com

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I have seen The Barking Claw’s cart for some time outside in Grumpy’s Pub’s parking lot.

To be honest, my first thought was: lobster from a cart? How good could that be? How fresh is it? Did it come from a plastic tub? But then I thought, if the lobster rolls weren’t delicious, I wouldn’t see the cart there year after year. So this was the year that I was going to try one. We stopped over on a Sunday afternoon (they are only open Wed-Sun, 11-3) to give one a try.

The lobster rolls are well priced at $16. You can also get hot dogs or a stuffed quahog.

Owner Bill Swain loads the lobster rolls up with a good deal of lobster meat. There’s no mayo here (thank goodness), just lobster and some butter with a little bit of lettuce on a toasted hot dog bun.

I have to say that I was a fool not to have stopped earlier, these lobster rolls rank right up at the top of my list. The lobster is fresh and sweet. The presentation is simple, letting the lobster speak for itself.

The Barking Claw

29 Locust Road, Falmouth, MA

In the parking lot at Grumpy’s Pub

https://www.facebook.com/TheBarkingClaw/timeline

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The food truck cooks pizza in 90 seconds in their 900 degree oven. They are camped out on the Greenway on Wednesdays and Fridays. Can’t get enough of them at lunch time? You can have them cater your event – I’m thinking this would be an awesome idea to have them come and do a summer outing for my office.

The truck had so many delicious sounding pizzas, it was hard to choose. Oh, and they have baked pastas as well (next time!!). I had the sausage pizza, with (not too) spicy sausage, mozzarella (they make it fresh every day), and oregano. The pizza is thin crust but it is soft and chewy – the sign on a great pizza is always the cough. The pizza was a generous size, I took  a half of it home with me! Great experience, great pizza and great company. Looking forward to trying out the restaurant in the near future.

Posto Mobile

Tuesday – Innovation & Design Center
Wednesday – High Street/ Rowes Wharf Plaza (High St. & Atlantic Ave) on Greenway
Thursday – West End (Blossom Street at Emerson Place behind Mass General Hospital)
Friday – High Street/ Rowes Wharf Plaza (High St. & Atlantic Ave) on Greenway

Disclaimer: Marlo Marketing invited me for lunch as their guest and provided me with a complimentary lunch. All opinions are my own.

http://www.postomobile.com

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