Sweet Potato Supreme

I spent a ridiculous amount of time and energy going grocery shopping today, despite the fact that I'm leaving for 10 days on Saturday. So when I got home it was already 3 and I was starving. I wanted something quick that I could get going while I cooked lunch and I remembered my favorite go-to veggie for quick- the sweet potato.

I nuked a medium/large sweet potato for about 12 minutes while I chopped up some fresh cilantro and chives from my up-until-this-point-sort-of-disappointing Aerogarden as well as 1 clove of garlic. When the potato was done, I cut it in half and cut out a small hole from the middle of each half to which I added some Earth Balance margarine, garlic, herbs, and salt and pepper. I meant to add chili powder but forgot.

I smushed it all up and ate it on 2 pieces of whole wheat toast. Perfect quick afternoon meal.

Lentil Burgers Pt II: Repurposed and Back with a Bite

Since my lentil burger recipe made a million burgers, I had some for dinner last night and lunch and dinner tonight. I figured I'd do something a little different for tonight, so I changed them up a little bit. Not much, but enough.

To the cauliflower cheeze sauce I added a little spicy brown mustard. It was the best move I've ever made. Since I bought bread today, I made an open faced sandwich with my new sauce on the bread side and on the top so my roasted onions seasoned with salt and pepper would stick. Amazing.

Sweet Potato Lentil Burgers

I had an extra sweet potato, and, while I was tempted to make another pot of soup with it and some peanut butter, I opted for something new. I did some Googling and found someone else who's done some Googling and came up with something similar to what I wanted. These red bean, sweet potato, and quinoa patties seemed great, so I took a crack at it and made a few substitutions.

1/2 cup uncooked quinoa

1/2 cup uncooked lentils

1 medium (fist-sized) sweet potato

1 medium red onion

4-5 cloves garlic

6-7 baby carrots

1-2 TB chopped fresh basil

1-2 tsp dried basil

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 TB red wine vinegar

Salt and Pepper to taste

1/4 cup uncooked couscous in lieu of breadcrumbs

This used up a lot of pots, so I inititally cooked the lentils until tender but not quite mushy. Then at the same time in different pots, I:

1. Boiled the sweet potato that I'd cut into small chunks
   
2. Cooked the quinoa


3. Cooked the onion in a little olive oil until clear, then added garlic and carrots for another few minutes.

Once done, I added them all to a bowl that could have been slightly bigger, along with the basil, vinegar, salt and pepper. I smushed the sweet potatoes on the side of the bowl and mixed everything together. I added the couscous at the end and gave it a few more stirs. Then I let it sit in the fridge for a few hours until I was ready for it.

I'm not a big fan of frying, whether it's deep or pan. After shaping into patties, I sprayed some olive oil (my mom gave me a great pump thing so it sprays just a little pure oil) on both sides and put on a baking sheet at 350 for 20-30 minutes, flipping mid-way through the cooking time. I cranked it up to 400 for the last 10 or so minutes to get it crispier. It made 7 large patties, though I ate one before I cooked it. You can easily stretch it to 8, and I calculated there are about 1000 calories in the whole batch.

I didn't have any bread, and didn't want to make roti since the patties were slightly labor intensive. So I steamed a head of cauliflower and made a cheezy cauliflower sauce for the patties. I put about 1/2 cup of the cooked cauliflower in my immersion blender attachment (a blender is fine) and added some salt, pepper, fresh cilantro, soy milk, tahini, and nutritional yeast.

Spicy Sweet Potato Soup with Quinoa

I've been eating leftover soups this week as well as going with my fallback of barley and split peas, so tonight I thought I'd get a little exciting with my food choices. I had a lot of good ingredients sitting around so I came up with this soup, which is a variation of of sweet potato soup I've made before.

I cut 2 medium sweet potatoes into small wedges and boiled them until soft. I also added about 1tst of fresh ginger. When the potatoes were done I added another 1tsp or so of fresh ginger, some chipotle powder, chili powder, and salt. I blended with the immersion blender and added 1 cup of soy milk and 2 TB of red wine vinegar. I'm pretty sure I should have added the vinegar in before the milk, but oh well.

In another pan I sauteed 4 cloves of garlic in a little bit of olive oil and then added 1c water and .5cup quinoa. Once that was done, I added 6 chopped scallions, salt, and juice from 1/2 of a lime. I scooped the soup in a bowl and, surprise, surprise, added the quinoa mixture to it.

It was pretty spicy but delicious.

Christmas Recap

Since my grandmother is still recovering from her April cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment, I spent Christmas in Georgia with her and my parents. To ease my mom's constant burden of being her caregiver, I thought I'd cook dinner. Little did I realize, however, that I'd have no access to internet or cell phone because I was back in 1955 rural Georgia. Let's just say my improvisational skills were really tested.

I settled on:
Stuffed acorn squash- I cooked barley and lentils in some veggie broth and added some cranberries, cilantro, and hot Mexican-style chili powder, then stuffed it into the squash. The colors were delightful and very Christmas-like
Pecan stuffing- I made stuffing with a little extra margarine for flavor and some pecans since my grandmother has a pecan orchard and they were fresh off the trees
Sweet potatoes- I added roasted garlic, chives, and margarine to some boiled (w/skins) sweet ptoatoes
Sauteed spinach with caramalized onions
Beer bread

I also wanted to make some gingerbread cookies, but alas, no blog access for the recipe, and I didn't want to buy molasses because I knew no one else would ever use it and it would just get tossed. So I searched my computer and found this recipe for Chocolate Chip Walnut Pumpkin Cookies that I luckily had saved. I omitted the eggs, forgot the baking soda, subbed unsweetened apple sauce for the oil, used pecans instead of walnuts, and added a cup of cranberries. I think it had too much chocolate (blasphemy!) and I'd probably leave it out altogether if I was going to make it again.

I ate these damn things left and right as if I was going to die if my stomach wasn't completely full with cookies. Every 10 minutes I'd scarf down 2 more to the point where I wanted to vomit. Yet I kept eating...

Ginger Lime Sweet Potato Soup

In the past I have professed my love for the sweet potato. Sometimes I struggle with moderation, and I overdosed on the poor tasty tuber a few too many times. I was running out of new ways to enjoy it and reverting to my regular fallback recipes.

In trying to figure out what I was going to finish up in my fridge before the holidays, I stumbled upon some sweet potatoes. So I Googled "sweet potato soup" and found this recipe for Ginger Lime Sweet Potato Soup, which is kismet because I had all 3 of the titled ingredients. I didn't have celery or, gasp, onions, so I just sauteed some diced baby carrots until tender. I, of course, had no cumin, so I added some chipotle flakes and chilli powder along with grated lime and ginger leftover from my delicious homemade ginger ale. I added 4 med-large sweet potatoes (cubed) and boiled until done. Then I got out my favorite tool of all time, the immersion blender, and blended half of it (ladeled out the other soup into a bowl because I like chunks). I added the 1/2 cup of soy milk and swired it around so it looked pretty until it mixed in. Meanwhile, I boiled 3/4c lentils and 3/4cup quinoa. When it was done, I added some salt and lime juice.

It made 4 very large but low-cal servings. It really would have been fine doing .5c each lentils and quinoa, but I needed some extra protein for dinner, so tonight's bowl was a little fuller than the others.

I never would have imagined using these flavors together, but it was amazing. I could definitely taste the lime and the ginger but not in an overpowering way. It was just so unique. I think the lime turned my lentils and quinoa into crack, too, because they were amazing on their own. Next time, it gets some Better Than Cream Cheese instead of the soy milk.

Mexican Sweet Potato Tofu Stoup

Mexican Sweet Potato Stoup

2 small onions sauteed with
6 cloves of garlic then added
dry white wine to deglaze and
water with
1 package of extra firm tofu, cubed, with
4TB garlic chipotle salsa and
Chili powder, cumin, salt to simmer 15 minutes, then
2 medium/large sweet potatoes and
1/2 c bulgur until done

I originally envisioned this dish with black beans, but the tofu in my fridge had been in there for way too long. While I'm tempted to give up on tofu, I'm determined to learn out to cook with it (which I didn't do well in this dish). The tofu doesn't taste bad, it just wasn't what I was hoping for. And I oversalted in my zeal to make it taste Mexican since all the spices I used had salt in addition to the heaping amount of salt I threw in. Next time I'll use black beans, lime, and chipotle and pray that it comes out a little better.

Seasoned Sweet Potato Fries with Chipotle Mustard Dipping Sauce

I heart sweet potatoes. Duh.

I cut up 2 giant sweet potatoes and split them into 3 groups. I added a touch of olive oil to all 3 and then seasoned them differently. One group got just salt and pepper, one got "Mexican Style Chili Powder" (chili powder with cumin), and one got rosemary, greatest spice ever. I baked them for 30-40 minutes on 400, refusing to flip them since I was feeling defiant. And I went to great lengths to keep the flavors from mingling.




I scraped a few very small chunks out of the frozen chipotle peppers in my freezer (orginally canned chipotles in adobo), nuked them for 10 seconds, then added a tablespoon or two of regular mustard. Simple. I will not dip the rosemary fries in the mustard for no real reason.










They are amazing. Duh.

My Tastiest Creation Yet

I love sweet potatoes. They are a great lunch- I often just pop one in the microwave at work for 9 minutes and eat it plain for lunch. When I went to California, I cooked some sweet poatatoes and cut them up to take with me on the plane. Sweet potato fries are also a delight.

So for brunch today I decided to use up my last sweet potato. I put it in a 400 degree oven and let that baby bake for what seemed like forever. While it was baking, I cooked 2 very tiny onions and 3 cloves of garlic in some leftover sauvignon blanc from Friday night that sadly did not get consumed. I cooked them until they were pretty brown, deglzing the pan with the wine a few times. While I was waiting for the potato to be done, I also made .25cup of whole wheat couscous with a generous amount of dried Italian herbs.

When the sweet potato was done, I (amazingly) scooped out all the potato and mixed with the wined onions/garlic and mashed it up. I also added 1TB Earth Balance Soy Butter to the couscous and let it melt a little bit from the general kitchen heat. I topped the potato with the couscous, applying with a spoon and using my hand to smush it down. I then put it back in the oven to broil and get the top nice and toasty.

It was heavenly! And it looked pretty! The sweet onions/garlic went so well with the caramalized sugars from the sweet potato, and the herbed topping was so good. The best part was getting a little of the couscous, some sweet potato, and the crispy skin. It might have been a smidge better with some salt, but that's not really an option until I go to the grocery later. Simply amazing.