Baked Sweet Potatoes

I saw it in a magazine so I thought I’d give it a go.

Take a couple of medium – large’ish sweet potatoes, scrub them, pop them in a 375 oven for an hour.  Eat like you would a regular baked potato.  We put bacon, broccoli, cheese, and sour cream on ours.  Pretty tasty!

Three Bean Chili

And while I’ve got the blog open, I may as well post another recipe I just tried tonight.  Once again, it’s from Cooking Light.  I’m loving all of the healthy recipes I’ve been making lately!

Grossman suggested doubling or even tripling this he loved it so much.  I’m thinking of making a triple batch and freezing part of it; I’ll report back on how that goes if/when I do it.  I also whipped up a quick batch of instant cornbread to go with this.  So good!

Three Bean Chili

Ingredients

• 2  teaspoons  olive oil
• 1  cup  prechopped onion
• 1/2  cup  prechopped green bell pepper  (I don’t like green pepper so I skipped it)
• 2  teaspoons  bottled minced garlic  (I minced three cloves of garlic)
• 3/4  cup  water
• 2  tablespoons  tomato paste
• 2  teaspoons  chili powder
• 2  teaspoons  ground cumin
• 1/4  teaspoon  black pepper
• 1  (15 1/2-ounce) can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
• 1  (15 1/2-ounce) can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
• 1  (15 1/2-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1  (14 1/2-ounce) can organic vegetable broth (such as Swanson Certified Organic)  (I used low-sodium chicken broth)
• 1  (14 1/2-ounce) can no-salt-added diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1  tablespoon  yellow cornmeal
• 1/4  cup  chopped fresh cilantro  (didn’t have it, didn’t add it)
• 6  tablespoons  reduced-fat sour cream

Preparation

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion, bell pepper, and garlic to pan; sauté 3 minutes. Stir in 3/4 cup water and next 9 ingredients (through diced tomatoes); bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 8 minutes. Stir in cornmeal; cook 2 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in cilantro. Serve with sour cream.

Nutritional Information

Calories:

180 (25% from fat)

Fat:

4.9g (sat 1.5g,mono 1.7g,poly 0.3g)

Protein:

8.4g

Carbohydrate:

29.5g

Fiber:

8.6g

Cholesterol:

5mg

Iron:

2.3mg

Sodium:

714mg

Calcium:

86mg

Sweet Potato Pasta Thingy

Yup, that’s what we had for dinner tonight.  A sweet potato pasta thingy.  Here’s the thing, my stomach has been working against me lately.  As in, I haven’t really been able to stray from the bathroom for an extended period of time the past couple of days.  I’ve also been traveling and eating a larger amount of meat than usual the past weekend.  And as we all know (or most of you, anyway), I’m allergic to meat.  Good times.

ANYWAY.  I haven’t made it to the store since last week, and I didn’t want to eat anything with meat tonight.  This didn’t leave me with a lot of options, so I decided to just wing it.  I surfed for some ideas on how to use what I had on hand, and this is what I came up with.

Sweet Potato Pasta Thingy

2-3 sweet potatoes
olive oil
Salt
Pepper
a box of pasta (I used penne)
3-4 cloves of garlic
Italian seasoning
Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400.  Peel sweet potatoes and cut them to about 1″ pieces.  Put the pieces in a baking dish, coat with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and stick it in the oven for about 45 minutes or until soft.

Boil water, add a few pinches of salt, and make the pasta.

While the pasta is boiling, chop, press, or mince garlic.  Heat a small saute pan over medium-lowish heat, and add some olive oil.  Add the garlic and saute till it’s golden brown but not burned.  Take off heat and add a few sprinkles of Italian seasoning.

Drain pasta, add olive oil/garlic concoction.  Mash the sweet potatoes with a potato masher.  Put the pasta in a bowl/on a plate/however you eat it, scoop some sweet potatoes on top, and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Voila!  A tasty vegetarian dish that’s fairly good for you!