Happy Monday!! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. It was low key over here. I worked pretty much all day on Friday and when I finally got home around 7:30, I was POOPED! I think I passed out at 9 p.m. #grandmastatus. Saturday I worked in the morning, got a facial in the afternoon, and then Michael made freaking awesome pasta which was immediately followed by an outing for ice cream.  Yesterday we went on a nice walk before the heat was at full force to Maple Acres Farmers Market, a wonderful farm near our place that has all sorts of amazing fresh produce and meat! We bought $8 worth of produce that would have probably been $20 at any grocery store. I'm talking 25 cents for a massive eggplant. And 3 for $1 cucumbers. Shop local - so worth it! If you're in the Philadelphia area or surrounding suburbs I definitely recommend a trip to Maple Acres.

We chilled by the pool, watched the olympics and browsed properties to buy in Italy for the rest of the day. No we're not moving to Italy, but one can dream! If couch lounging was an olympic sport, we would have gotten gold yesterday. And then we had more pasta for dinner last night with homemade marinara...can you tell we really, REALLY want to go back to Italy?!? 

Lazy weekend for the win after a crazy few past weekends.

Chewy Apricot Energy Bars

My friends bought me this new cookbook for my birthday in attempt to motivate me to post more recipes on the blog and it totally worked.

chewyapricotbook

You know I'm all about my power snacks. I just tweaked a few ingredients in the recipe to make it my own and to use up what I had and I absolutely LOVED this recipe. Its chewy, gooey, nutty, crunchy and perfectly sweet. 

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Chewy Apricot Bars via ahealthfulheart.com

Ingredients:

1/2 cup coconut oil
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup peanut butter*
1 apple peeled, cored and coarsely grated
1 2/3 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup oat flour**
1/2 cup chopped walnuts***
1/3 cup sunflower seeds
1 1/2 cups dried apricots, diced

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray an 8-inch square cake pan with cooking spray or line with parchment paper
Heat oil & sugar in saucepan over low until sugar dissolves
Remove from heat & stir in nut butter
Add apple, oats, flour, walnuts, sunflower seeds and mix well
Spoon about 2/3 of mixture into pan
Sprinkle with apricots (press them into mixture) and dot the remaining oat mixture over the apricots in a thin layer
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until top is golden brown
Let cool until almost cold (or else they will crumble apart!) and then cut into 16 squares
Store in fridge for up to 3 days or freeze for later

**Recipe called for almond butter, but I only had PB on hand and it worked great - could use any nut butter!
**Recipe called for brown rice flour but I stuck with oats here
***Recipe called for almonds, again adapted here with walnuts because I love walnuts in baked goods

Hope you all have a great Monday!

XO - Rach

What did you do this weekend?

If you could travel anywhere right now, where would it be?

She put the chocolate in the coconut, she ate 'em all up. That's how that song goes right? Chocolate & coconut > lime & coconut. For sure.  When I was at the Garden of Life Blogger Summit back in May, I met Sophie Jaffe, a Cali-based yogi and creator of Philosophie superfood products. She was kind to send me some of her products to try out and I have to say her Cacao Magic Superfood Blend is delicious!! Especially for baking and making energy bites. I try to make a batch of energy bites or protein balls every week for when I need a quick little pick me up and for something sweet after lunch or dinner (let's be real, this is the main reason).

Choco-Coconut Superfood Bites 

At the Garden of Life Blogger's Summit I also learned the key to making these energy bites from Moreya's FitBites demo...always use boiling water!! It breaks the oats down so you end up with a truffle-type consistency. It makes all the difference! 

These lil' things are truffley, chocolatey, nutty and filled with superfoods. In addition to the superfood blend, I used chia seeds for an extra superfood kick and of course chocolate chips, the superfood of all superfoods. You could totally just sub in chocolate protein powder or regular protein and some extra cocoa powder for the superfood blend. 

[yumprint-recipe id='27'] Enjoy!! 

What's your favorite superfood?

You can't ask a big Jewish family to keep any secrets. Since March I was planning to go home to surprise my grandpa for his 75th birthday, with high hopes of pulling through with the surprise, but what was I thinking?! Of course my family can't do surprises. 

I flew home to Florida last weekend and as I was getting of the plane, my sister calls me from Israel, literally across the world to talk to me and the first thing she tells me is that my grandpa knows and the surprise is no more. Awesome. And my sister of all people who wasn't even in the country tells me! I think my family was going to try to play it off to make me feel better. Although it was ruined, it was still a blast. It's such a treat to go home to sunny florida and soak up family time, beach time and pool time. Happy birthday Poppies, I know you're reading this! Yes, I still call my grandpa Poppies. In fact, the whole family does. 

It was back to the grind this week! Can I just say how much I love my job again. I actually can't quite call it a job when I get to train freaking awesome people all day and teach group fitness. What is life?! I'm so grateful.  I had a client last week touch her toes for the first time ever in her life and she was so happy that she cried. And then I almost cried. Definitely one of my top trainer moments so far and I haven't been doing this for that long. This is why I get so excited to go to work everyday. It's the best. 

Raspberry Swirl Chocolate Chip Bread

[yumprint-recipe id='26']YUM! This bread is my favorite. It's easy to make and the swirl makes it feel oh, so fancy.

Have a great Wednesday beautiful people!

XO - Rach

Can your family keep a surprise a secret?