This week Charlottesville (and certain randomly selected pockets of the east coast) got hit with a one day blizzard.  In 24 hours the skies dropped slightly over a foot of snow, effectively causing a state of emergency and shutting down the town.  Oh yeah, and 60K residents lost power for days.

While most of the city was wishing they had gone to the grocery store, living in unheated and dark houses with only candle light and pantry snacks, Bug had the best day of her life.

Despite a 3 hour break from heat and electricity, nothing super eventful disturbed what otherwise could have been termed as a perfect snow day.

I had managed to squeeze in a grocery run on Tuesday night around 10pm, immediately prior to (and a little during) the start of the storm.  The amazing thing about eating clean and only shopping the perimeter of the store (produce, meat, eggs + wine..yes, wine) is that most people freaking out over winter storms stock up on milk, bread, and snack foods, leaving fully stocked shelves where I was looking.  Had we lost power long term (like so many other Charlottesville residents) the food would have gone bad, but thankfully the outage was short lived and as soon as the power came back on food cooking commenced.  And it became a big production.

I started by sautéing zucchini with mushrooms and coconut oil.

Added some spaghetti squash that had been roasted in in the oven, and seasoned it all with the trader joes everyday seasoning and ground sea salt.

[If I had it to do all over again, I would have drained the pan post-mushroom softening but pre-spaghetti squash adding.  Regardless, it tasted good, and was the perfect replacement for pasta.]

While that was cooking, I popped the asparagus (lightly drizzled with olive oil) into the oven to broil on high for less than 10 minutes, until they were tender but still slightly firm.

The salad for the meal was angel/thin cut cabbage, purple onion, slivered almonds, ground sea salt and pepper, mixed with white wine vinegar and olive oil.

Add to that my favorite guacamole and flank steak, and we had enough food to ensure that we didn’t go hungry, should the power flicker back off.

Thankfully the power stayed on, but we were fueled up and ready to go, no matter what the weather brought our way.

I considered for a moment doing a kettlebell and bodyweight circuit at home, but in the spirit of celebrating the snow day, I moved around the house getting myself organized and let that suffice as a workout.  Sometimes your body tells you when it’s time to rest, and sometimes the universe does.  When you live in the south, snow days are meant to be celebrated, and not taken for granted.