another snow day & the abbaye!

thursday we had another snow day but eric and i were starting to get a little stir crazy staying in our apartment. we decided to go to out to lunch at the abbaye, which is about a block away from our apartment. for some reason we don't go there often, although it's really close, and we had never eaten there.



i was really happy to see they had a salad for one of their specials and it sounded delicious. my salad had blood oranges, grapefruit, radicchio, and toasted hazelnuts.



i also ordered an order of fries. i wish i had tried their sweet potato fries, but their regular fries did not disappoint.



unfortunately eric wasn't as happy with his food.



he ordered the bbq sietan dish that included coleslaw, fries, and asparagus. the room temperature sietan was in tofu like blocks that were fairly soft, not what you would expect. they were topped with a good amount of mediocre bbq sauce. the coleslaw was a Carolina type of slaw with bland mix of cabbage and vinegar dressing. there was also some asparagus thrown on top almost like an after thought. the fries were good though, thin, hand-cut, and crisp. not worth the $12 by any means though.

on the menu they also have a few other salads, a sietan cheesestake that can be made vegan with the exclusion of cheese, and a lentil sandwich as a rotating special.

overall the abbeye has a good beer list, tasty salad and fries but the plates are nothing special. the service was not bad could have been better seeing that it was so slow. since we live a block away i'm sure we will be back for beers/fries some time in the future.

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.

photos from the weekend

we survived snowmageddon!
friday evening we decided to brave the beginning of the blizzard to pick up a few essentials.


we walked up the street to the foodery, which is an amazing beer store.


the foodery is awesome because you can build your own sixpack. it's a great way to try new beers.


i was really excited for more snow because i love snow, and i had bought new snow boots i wanted to test out. do you know how hard it is to find vegan snow boots?!


it was started to really come down and get windy, so we headed home.




but before we went inside i had to do some impromptu car modeling and snow eating.


here are our goods:
unibroue chambly noire
unibroue blanche de chambly
bell's expedition stout
bell's two hearted ale
the duck rabbit wee heavy scotch style ale


we decided to try three friday night.


one time eric and i went to the saint arnold brewery in houston (which is awesome!) and we got these really cute small beer glasses. they are perfect for sharing beer.




snowy saturday mornings call for chocolate chip pancakes! i usually use the perfect pancakes recipe from vegan brunch, except add chocolate chips. this time i added white and dark chocolate chips.


we also busted out the juicer and eric made carrot juice and i had grapefruit juice.




it snowed pretty crazy till midafternoon.


so we prepped a few things to do in the dehydrator. we made crackers using juice pulp.


and i made macaroons. these were really simple and easy to make. it's just unsweetened coconut, almond flour (we just pulsed almonds in the food processor), agave, and a splash of vanilla.


we also saw this rare sight! kitta marie and grissom cuddling. it lasted about one minute before they attacked each other.


and then somehow, someway, eric convinced me to go on a bike ride.




we rode to the art museum with intentions of going sledding, except our friends with the sleds never showed up.


on our ride back we made a pitstop at the belgian cafe for some beer and fries.






and we made it home and decided to run and ride our bikes through the snow in our alley.


later on we decided to try another new beer. the name sounds really crazy, and it smelled pretty crazy, but it actually tasted really good.


and after that beer i fell asleep, at 8pm, on a saturday. i'm cool like that.

sunday morning i woke up and pulled the macaroons out of the dehydrator. i am happy to say they turned out delicious and taste exactly like real macaroons. i am already planning on making more this week.


eric was in the kitchen most of the day on sunday.
he made homemade veggie burgers for lunch on sunday. he used black beans, almond flour, hemp milk, nutritional yeast, onions, peppers, jalapenos, roasted garlic, carrots, chickpeas, and some spices. he pretty much cleaned out our fridge making these.


and he made hummus. i love his hummus and think he makes the best. this one was roasted red pepper. eric roasted the red peppers, jalapenos, garlic and onions first, then in the food processor he added the cooked mixture to a can of chickpeas. then he added lemon juice, salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil.


and then he made his usual cookie, oatmeal chocolate chip! to make them healthier he used white whole wheat flour. obviously it's not as healthy as whole wheat, but better than white!


we ended up going to a friend's for the super bowl and stuffing ourselves, but no photos.

photos from the weekend

so you might have heard we got some snow in the northeast over the weekend...






all of those photos were taken early in the day, when there were only a few inches. we ended up getting around 23 inches at our apartment.



this was eric's car mid day...


and this is what it looked like sunday morning...


we had planned a few weeks ago to have a christmas party on saturday night. once the snow started we figured no one would actually show up, but we continued on with our idea by baking and decorating all day.


slyfox christmas ale is amazing




i finally finished the wreath!


this idea was from real simple. i made the sugar cookie recipe from vegan cookies take over the world, then i sliced the dough into rectangles. once they baked and cooled i dipped the ends into melted chocolate, then sprinkled with crushed peppermint candy.


this was another real simple idea. i melted 12 oz. of chocolate and poured it in a 9"x13" cookie sheet and sprinkled with mixed nuts. then refrigerated for an hour, until hard.




we had four people make it to our christmas party! four! ha. we plan to have a another party when there isn't 2 feet of snow on the ground.


sunday morning we both woke up craving pancakes. we needed to fuel up for shoveling!


we needed to get eric's car out, and shovel a pathway to the road.


i've never shoveled snow before, and was actually pretty excited.








success!


i then convinced eric to help me finish my christmas shopping.


except two of the main places i needed to go where closed. I'M SORRY! MOST PEOPLE ARE GETTING THEIR PRESENTS LATE BECAUSE THESE PLACES WERE CLOSED.






adam and juli were hardcore enough to walk over saturday night in the snow, so eric and i walked over to juli's sunday night for dinner. they even cooked for us!


and dolly put on her sunday best.

tomorrow's my last day of work for a week! wednesday i fly out to lubbock and eric flies to pittsburgh.