Monday, February 3, 2014

Hey, Sweet Potato!

Well, happy Monday, beautiful!

In an effort to get my whole (tiny, two-person) family healthy I have been making an active effort to plan and actually make dinners from (mostly) scratch every night of the week. For the first couple of weeks I relied on our usual dinners (tofu stir-fries, Boca burgers and steamed veggies, loaded sweet potatoes) but those got old pretty fast. So I turned to the interwebz and each Friday when I'm meal planning, I try to incorporate at least two recipes that I've never tried before. 

I love sweet potatoes, while doing a search for some kind of new sweet P recipe I found these sweet potato quinoa balls and immediately put them on our dinner chalkboard.


They didn't disappoint! I used the slow cooker to cook the sweet potatoes (scrubbing the skin and then dropping 'em the crock pot for about 6 hours on low).  I made quite a few adjustments to the recipe (mostly because sometimes I don't pay full attention and I didn't have certain things on hand).


I love spicy food and I am addicted to crushed red pepper. I sprinkle it on everything.  To season the sweet potato-quinoa mixture I used chopped garlic, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, and a bit of dried basil.


In the olden days when I was a kid, and a meat eater, I  loved making meat balls at my grandma's house. It was an almost once-a-week ritual and I loved to help season and form them. Now the thought of digging my hands into meat makes me want to ralph my guts out but digging into these brought back all the good pieces of those memories.


I didn't have a glass pan (one day I will buy one, I swear) and I had a real Goldilocks moment of "this metal pan is too small, this one is too big." So I settled on a good, ol' cupcake pan. It worked like a charm! They came out almost perfect and cooked pretty evenly. I *may* have overfilled the tin. Next time I'd definitely make them a teensy bit smaller.
 

I served them over a bed of spinach and covered with a hearty dose of sriracha sauce with some steamed lemon broccoli on the side. 


I thought these were delicious and would probably change it up a bit if we made the again--maybe adding diced apples and jalapenos to the mix. Even Rhyno agreed that these were SO filling (I put three on his plate and he only made it through two). I even made one garlic-free so Violet could have a taste (and I wonder why she begs at the table like a beast...). I will definitely make these again! 

Do you have any fantastic sweet potato recipes?

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You look so pretty today.