snow day!

i felt like a little kid yesterday morning! waking up really early, checking outside to see if it really did snow a lot, and then checking my email to see if work was canceled. ok i didn't check my email when i was a kid, or have work, but you know!
needless to say work was closed. sort of, i have a laptop so i am still expected to work from home, but it was a nice change of pace.

i started off the day with one of my favorite breakfast combination, chocolate chips, almond butter and flax seed on top of a bagel.


once eric woke up he decided to make pancakes. i was sort of bummed i had already eaten breakfast.




the snow yesterday was weird. it snowed overnight, then rained in the morning, then got really crazy the rest of the day. we had blizzard conditions and most of the roads were shutdown. we ended up not leaving the house at all during the day.
but we did eat a lot!

our local Asian supermarket has a number of fresh pastas to choose from. it's really nice having fresh pasta without the hassle of making it sometimes.



most of the pastas have egg, but a few of the plain noodle varieties don't. they utilize very basic, yet semi-healthy ingredients such as wheat flour to replace durum and/or white flours.


eric had made lasagna the other day and wanted to try a new alfredo type of cheese sauce. He had never used silken tofu for a cheese sauce base so he gave it a try. it turned out pretty well for the first go around. but he mentioned that next time he wasn't going to use as much/any tofu and replace it with more soaked cashews. since we are working on posting more recipes and keeping track of them heres the recipe for the alfredo sauce:

- 1/2 block silken tofu
- 1/2 cup soaked cashews (try to soak them in water for 3+ hours until soft)
- 1/8 cup of hemp milk (soy, rice, almond, ect. will be fine)
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley
- 2 cloves of baked garlic (to bake, wrap in foil with some olive oil, salt, and pepper until soft. Usually about 35-45 minutes in the oven at 350F. you could also substitute 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of granulated garlic, or to taste if you don't like garlic as much as me)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- pinch of black pepper
take the soaked cashews, hemp milk, lemon juice and blend. add the rest of the ingredients until they are thoroughly blended.

since he had made lasagna last week and wanted to try a new recipe, he used the fresh pasta in its place and topped it with the alfredo sauce, a few spoonfuls of his marinara that he had made the week before, and garnished it with a few parsley leave. it turned out pretty well.




i went for a simple hummus sandwich. it was delicious!


with some veggie bootie on the side. um i'm obsessed with this. and can't stop eating it.


we really did not leave. and it was nice. we finished season 3 of dexter, did some laundry and worked out. but don't worry we were all staying warm.


i really like cliff bars and luna bars, but they tend to get pricey and i've been meaning to bake my own bars for a while. yesterday was the perfect opportunity. these were really easy to bake.


recipe
2 tsp ground flax seed
6 Tbsp water

2 cups quick cooking oats
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup granular sweeter
1/2 cup chocolate chips, coconut, really whatever you want to add (fruit? raisins?)
1/2 cup nut butter
1/4 cup maple syrup


preheat oven to 375 degrees
combine flax and water in a bowl and set aside.
in a separate bowl combine all dry ingredients and mix together. add in your chocolate chips, coconut, whatever combination.
in another bowl mix together the nut butter and maple syrup. add the flax mixture and stir.
then add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix it all together.

pour the mixture into an 8x8 pan sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. you are going to have to press the mixture into the pan.
bake for 15 minutes.
once you take it out of the oven let it cool some and then but into bars. let the bars cool some more then place on a cooling rack.

back to what we did...later on we decided to meet up with some friends to hang out/drink beer. we picked up some more beer at the foodery and walked around northern liberties.








the roads and the snow were still pretty bad. i was really hoping i wouldn't have to drive to work today (it takes me about 45 minutes on a good day to get to work). luckily i woke up this morning and had the option to work from home and eric has another snow day! unfortunately i think most of the day will be spent digging out my car.