For the last month I have been trying to spend more time with improving my workflow in front end development. Then at work I got the opportunity to present my findings to my team. I put this little deck together on http://slid.es, which uses reveal.js to make pretty presentations.

I spoke about two tools (Sass and LiveReload) and one process (SMACSS) I have begun using on a daily basis.

Sass

I love Sass. The ability to create mixins, extend classes, use variables and compile the code to a compressed version is brilliant. Additionally using nesting to deal with hover & focus states and media queries has really improved my development speed. It sill takes time to figure out what goes where when and how things break, but at least now I can go to an element and know everything is right there. And with Sass, if it doesn’t compile it tells me where to look across all my partials. It is definitely an organizational improvement.

LiveReload

I simply won’t work without this or a comparable tool ever again. I just need to find a way to automate display of hover/focus/active states and I will never really need to leave my text editor again.

SMACSS

I’m still fumbling my way through this one. If you are using SMACSS, you need to use Sass as it will help organize things. That being said, naming things here is easier than I thought, but organizing what goes where I still find challenging.

What a fun day! There was a little confusion in the scheduleing, but everything worked out well.

This week is CodePaLOUsa in Louisville, Kentucky. I hear it is pronounced L-uh-villl, but maybe I’m wrong.

I’ll be on stage twice this weekend presenting “Turning the Titanic: Getting Large Enterprise to Think Mobile First” and doing a workshop on Thursday, “Bulding Great Web Experiences for All Users” with a focus on accessibility. You can check out my sample site for that at Project Alice. It will also be the sample site for the book of a similar name (the name is unofficial still) I am working on. Hopefully that will be completed next month and self-published.

Start out with making some vegan Pesto like I used in my Spinach Linguini with Pesto and Avocado. Set this to the side and steam up your spaghetti squash. One the size of a standard American football should take an hour at 350 degrees. Don’t forget to poke holes with a knife to let the steam out.

This one comes with a warning. If you make this recipe as specified below, you better like hot foods. This what I call a triple burner, once on the way in, once while digesting and once on the way out. Now, not everyone feels hot foods the same way, but if anything I make is a triple burner, this is it. Feel free to modify your recipe to eliminate some of the peppers and spices until you get it to the heat you like. When I use hot peppers, I never take the seeds out. This is where all your flavor really comes from. If you find the peppers to be too hot, reduce the amount used instead of removing the seeds.

This weekend hoofin’ it around the Capitol Square farmers market, I found a booth selling fresh handmade organic pasta. They only had two types that were vegan, so I bought a 9 oz package of their spinach linguini to use for dinner tonight. Of course, I hadn’t figured out what I was going to do with it yet.

So this week, I had a craving for some good jambalaya, but I couldn’t find any recipe. I checked out a couple of non-vegan versions to see what kind of ingredients would be used. After reviewing a few things out there, I concocted this, which knocked my socks off. So I am here to share it with you, with two ways to cook it – On the spot, and in the crock pot.

Having to fed two omnivore children, especially when one leans to be more of a carivore, is always a challenge in a vegan house. One of the tricks I have found is to work with omnivorous meals and make them vegan. We have had the commercial burger patties in the past, but not all of those are actually vegan. I conceived this recipe as a variant of one my brother and sister-in-law make for their family. The flavor is off the charts, and when there are left overs, you can turn them into burritos instead of burgers.

This is my favorite bread. It rocks with any soup, chili or jambalaya dish that you put together. It also has the freedom to change up the spices and herbs to match what you like or the dish you are concocting. I make this with my breadmaker, but you could also do it by hand. You would have to mix the ingredients, let it rise, kneed it and rise again before baking though.

When I was a kid growing up on the east coast we would travel to New York City and Philadelphia. Each time I would beg my parents to get one of the soft pretzels from the guys on the corner. Nothing was better as a kid, and they remain one of my favorite snacks to this day. They fill you up and aren’t loaded with all of those horrible chemicals. The calorie count is low, and with my recipe using dark rye and whole wheat flours you get a better fiber and protein count into your system.