Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Sweet Potatoes

I love sweet potatoes. Especially compared to regular potatoes-- not bad, but not particularly inspiring, either. My life has been immeasurably better since I discovered sweet potato fries. The vegetable helps a lot with my number one guiding rule of nutrition-- the more colorful, the better.

Baked sweet potatoes, though, don't do a whole lot for me. They're not bad on occasion, but I kind of lost the taste for them after a few too many Baked Potato Wednesdays at my college cafeteria. They were one of a number of foods there that were much better in concept than execution, at least execution repeated interminably. Part of the problem was that there was a period where sweet potatoes were one of the few things I ate at the caf. After a few weeks of a diet based on cottage cheese, sweet potatoes, white toast, and apple sauce, all the components start to lose their interests.

So I roast them. Not much harder, and I think far more tasty. My recipe goes like this:
1 onion (yellow, white, or sweet)
1 sweet potato
1 tsp olive oil
salt & freshly ground black pepper 
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Cut the onion and the sweet potato up into 1 inch cubes. Peel the potato if you like, but it's not necessary. Toss with olive oil, salt, and black pepper, then spread out on a baking pan, or any flat, oven-proof dish. Bake for 30-40 minutes. Serve with a squeeze of lime or lemon juice. 
Serves 1. Multiply ingredients as necessary.
Foxboy, of course, feels strongly that these should be sprinkled with chili powder, "or cumin." I'm perfectly happy with the dish as presented. Last Friday, dinner was this and a baked beet, and it was excellent.

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