Category Archives: sweet potato

Frazzled brain

Whew.  What a day.  Or last couple of days.  Thank goodness for post scheduling so that I could have the meditation post from yesterday ready to go!  I am glad I am not the only one with the meditation-challenged mind.  It makes me feel less like something is wrong with me LOL!

I let myself sleep in a little bit this morning to the tune of almost 7 am, which was quite nice.  I am not sure if letting myself sleep is the right term as I don’t set an alarm, I just wake up early.  So let’s just say I slept a little later for whatever reason today.

I wanted waffles for breakfast, but I also kind of wanted a 1-minute muffin. The solution? Put the 1-minute muffin batter into the waffle iron!

It came out a very pretty shape.  Topped with blueberries and coconut butter.  I like the texture of this better than the microwave, too.

With John gone, it has been busy around here.  I had to watch over his business and do my own work.  Luckily or not, I got accidentally erased from the system at my job in the late afternoon yesterday so I couldn’t log in to do more work last night.  That was fun to try to get straightened out today, let me tell you.  It was a multi-hour process.  Which has now put me behind for the week. calmblueoceancalmblueoceancalmblueocean

At least my eating has been good these last couple of days.

I set up some beef broth yesterday, where I had soup bones from the smokehouse and put them in a pot with water, onions, carrots, and celery and let it simmer for a couple hours.  I ended up with some tasty beef broth.

For lunch, I heated up the broth and added some of the meat back in and stirred in a tablespoon of cream for body.

It was good!  Broth isn’t really that hard to make and mine is super low sodium.

On a side note – The weather is getting a little warmer now, but could we please get a little more sunshine?  Or how about any sunshine?  We had hopes to ride to bagels tomorrow, but the overnight low is supposed to dip back into the 20s.  Le sigh…

I stopped for a latte break.

I look kind of guilty.  What is up with that?

I can be very scatterbrained when John is gone sometimes.  I had actually left my keys in the front door lock from Sunday night after I got back from my sister’s until Monday afternoon when my mother saw them dangling from the lock when she came over! 😯  The dumb thing is that I went out that door again to get the mail on Monday and still didn’t seem them hanging there.

Here I slept all sound and happy not knowing that.  Best part of today was John arriving back around 4:30! I was so happy to see the car pull into the driveway. Our little family unit is complete again and maybe my brain will unfrazzle.

I had a hankering for sweet potato for dinner, so I had popped one in the toaster oven to bake up.  I find the sweet potato to be much sweeter baked than microwaved, does anyone else?

I topped the potato with Laughing Cow and some cooked chicken with a side of sauteed broccoli.  I then proceeded to mash it all together to eat :mrgreen:

John bought me a treat, which he said were very good.

Coconut macaroons covered in dark chocolate.

He was right.  They are good.

Question: Have you ever left your keys in the door lock?

Sweet potato shepherd’s pie

Happy St Patty’s Day!

It is a gorgeous sunny day out.  I got up and did some work before eating breakfast.  Productive much?  Sometimes I can be!  After a while, I cooked up a 1-minute muffin with the standard blueberries and coconut butter!

I think I ate this the other day, too.  I’m going to start losing readers if I don’t change things up LOL!

After breakfast, I went out for a nice walk.  It was a little chilly, but I just wanted to be outdoors in the sun!  It is weird that it is getting so warm and there is still so much snow on the ground.

I got wearing my green today.

Not sure why my collarbone looks all whackadoodle in this picture. That freaks me out a little.  Wish I could bring some of the padding from :ahem: down below to pad it up a little.

Lunch time included some egg salad!

I had frozen some peanut flour waffles and used a couple of those for bread.  I have to say I think the peanut flavor (although subtle) got in the way here.  Next time I will use regular protein waffles for the bread.

My mother stopped over with some irish soda bread from Rock Hill Bakehouse!

Filled with currants and caraway seeds. We had coffee and shared the bread after I toasted it. Nummers!

Dinner to celebrate is a shepherd’s pie with a twist! This is based on Rachael Ray’s version

Sweet Potato Shepherd’s Pie

  • 2 medium sweet potato peeled and cubed, 1 pound (450 g)
  • 2 tablespoon cream cheese
  • 1 large egg yolk
  • 1/2 cup low fat milk (1%)
  • Salt and  pepper
  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil (or other oil)
  • 1 pound lean ground pork
  • 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
  • 1/2 cup diced  onion
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 tablespoon  flour
  • 1/2 cup chicken or veggie broth
  • 1 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/4 cup frozen corn kernels
  • paprika

Directions

Peel and cut sweet potatoes into large chunks.  Place into a steamer basket and cook until fork tender (10 minutes or so)

While potatoes cook, heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the pork. Season meat with salt and pepper. Brown and crumble meat for 3 or 4 minutes until cooked.  Place into a small casserole dish.

Add coconut oil to pan. Add chopped carrot and onion. Cook veggies for 5 minutes or so, stirring frequently.

Add in the butter and once it melts, sprinkle the flour on top and stir for a couple minutes. Whisk in broth and Worcestershire sauce.

Thicken gravy 1 minute.  Add corn kernels.  Add gravy  and vegetables to the meat in the casserole dish and mix.

Drain potatoes and put them back in the pot.  Mash well and add the cream cheese and the milk.  Mix well.  Quickly stir in the egg yolk.

Preheat broiler to high.

Spread the sweet potatoes over the meat mixture in the casserole dish.  Sprinkle paprika on top.

Broil 6 to 8 inches from the heat until potatoes are evenly browned, about 10 minutes.

Serve!


This makes 4 really generous servings.

Stats (as best as I can get them): 415 calories, 19 g of fat, 35 g of carbs, 26 grams of protein.

Uber filling.  I think you could probably get at least 5 servings out of this and knock the calories down for each one.  The only thing I would do differently is to cook the carrots in the microwave a little beforehand to soften them up more.  They were pretty firm.  Otherwise, A+!

Hope you all had a green day! :mrgreen:

Bagel day makeup!

First off – a big hello to all the new Girl-Hero readers that have visited in the last couple of days.  I was honored to be asked by Jenn at Girl Heroes to do a feature on me.  You can view the article online here.  Please feel free to email or leave a comment if you are new.  I promise I don’t bite very hard 😀

I got up to ride the trainer this morning and will save the weights for Friday.  The snow stopped and the streets are all clear now.  It’s actually sunny and pretty:

We only ended up with about maybe a foot.  It varied a lot around the area.  I think being before the mountains buffered us a little bit.  Now that the roads are clear, it was time to make up bagel day!

Wheat bagel with some coffee.  It was so good, although the cafe was on the cold side.  I sure missed my bagel yesterday.

We came home and cleared the last inch or so out of the driveway that came overnight.  We have a very loooooong driveway.  Probably 100 feet.

See how there is no place to put the snow?  If we get a lot of snow that doesn’t melt, our driveway looks like a bobsled chute by the end of the season.

I know I owe you all a review of the Geneen Roth book, but I might have to wait until this weekend.  My mind has been preoccupied with the job situation the last few days.

Lunch time brought about one that I had earlier in the week because it was good with John’s muffin:

This was just regular low-fat vanilla yogurt, though, and not my Greek.  Not only did I steal half of  John’s muffin, but I took some of his yogurt, too!  Such a good wife 😀

I put out some feelers today with transcription companies and taking their tests. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people looking for work and not a lot of jobs, as with any industry.  My other part time job does not have any other accounts to put me on, so I have to try to make full time with the one I have if I can.  With having this other PT job, I also can’t get unemployment from losing the first- so I hope it works out.   Well, it will work out – I just don’t know how yet :mrgreen:

Snack time!

It is such a good thing that coffee is a legal drug or I would be so on the dark side.

I rode the bike trainer some more in the afternoon and got some guitar playing done.  So maybe I will sound decent on video in December LOL!

Orange superfood for dinner – sweet potatoes!  I made thick slices and dusted with cinnamon, then I baked them in the toaster oven for 35 minutes (flipping once).   Served with chicken and a pear.

I think I like the sweet potatoes better as these thicker slices, even though they take longer to cook.

Evening snack?

I would have like some M&Ms, but John has hidden those really well 😀

I am back to work tonight.  At least there is some available, so I am thankful for that.

Question:  How do you cook sweet potatoes?

Hills and more hills!

I decided on a rest day today.  My insomnia seems to have made a reappearance lately.  I was up at 5 a.m. today.  I came down and did some work, then just went out for a walk when it got light.  Normally I wouldn’t snack before a walk, but my tummy was growling, so I had a graham with fluff before leaving.

I had thought about running or biking, but realized I hadn’t taken a rest day in a while.  I love biking so much that I forget to not do it on occasion.  Rest days are so important.

We did not go for bagels this morning because of the window installers coming today too early for us to make it out and back.  I know you were all wanting to see a bagel picture almost as bad as I want to eat one :mrgreen:   We will go tomorrow.

Instead, I made protein waffles.

We didn’t have enough cottage cheese, so I subbed yogurt.

  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup of oats
  • 1/3 cup of yogurt (low fat vanilla)
  • 1/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon

They came out definitely different, but still yummy.  More soft in texture without the crispness of waffles.  I think I would reduce to 1/4 cup of yogurt next time, or use greek, as the batter was very liquidy.

Working away today while the window people worked.  They were upstairs today and I didn’t notice them very much.  I already notice the house much cooler because the glass blocks the heat from coming in.  Technology is amazing!

Lunch break.  Not much protein, but super colorful!

So I found the route for my charity ride next weekend.  I’m not going to lie – I am a bit skeered of it!  I know I can do it, but it will be tough, check it out:

😯 😯 😯   Who is the crazy nut that signs up for 62 miles of hills? Oh wait… it’s me….  Miles 25 to 30 are going to be really, really hard!  Not sure which I am more scared of, the climb up or the free fall down.  I might go scope out the course this weekend, but I almost do not want to see this hill in person before I have to go up it or I will have nightmares…  If you want to check out the route in full size glory, you can click here.

Afternoon snack break (there is a little chocolate under there) –

No coffee today.  Just wasn’t feeling it.  How weird is that?  I just wanted to chew versus drink.

They worked hard on those windows!  It’s neat to look out and not see the world ripply.  Pixie watched them intently when they worked in her favorite window:

Not quite finished yet, though – as they still need to cap most of them on the outside, but all the inside work is done:

17 windows needed to be done in this house.

Little by little we are doing nice things to this house.   I think it has been a long, long time since it was really loved by its owners.  I’ll post a picture of the outside tomorrow per request.

Dinner time and I needed some protein, so that meant pork!  Another burger.

I assigned John to make bread tonight since we are now out.

Done with job #1 for the week and just 4 hours tomorrow.  Even though I backed down to part time with both jobs, I still do 6 days a week.  But that is okay.  We just do what we need to, right?  At least until I open that coffee shop….

Off to buy a couple new window treatments.  New windows deserve new blinds and not the ones the are broken because the cat keeps going through them 😀

Sweet Potato Dense Muffins

Okay, I had to call these dense muffins because that is how they came out.  Almost biscuity.

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup of white flour
  • 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup of brown sugar (packed)
  • 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or cinnamon, whichever)
  • 1.5 tsp of baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup of milk (I used 1%)
  • 2 egg whites
  • 1/2 cup cooked sweet potato, mashed
  • 1.5 tsp of liquid oil
  • 1/4 cup of fresh cranberries, chopped (25 grams)
  • 1/2 oz of pecans, chopped

Preheat oven to 375F.  Prepare a 6 muffin tin pan with either nonstick spray or liners.  I used the larger muffin tin size, so I got 6.  In a medium size bowl, mix together the flours, sugar, spice, salt, and baking powder.  In a separate small bowl, beat together the milk, egg whites, oil, and sweet potato until smooth.

Add the wet mix to the dry and stir a few times, then add in the nuts and cranberries.

The mixture may seem a little dry (mine did), but I just mixed a little more.  You don’t want to over stir or the muffins will be tough.

Divide evenly into muffin cups:

See how thick this batter is?  Maybe a little more milk might make them rise better?

Bake at 375 for 18-20 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.  I would start checking at 15 minutes.

Breakfast is served:

Nutrition per muffin:  Using 1% milk for this and making 6 muffins out of the batch:

Calories 161.4
Total Fat 3.4 g
Saturated Fat 0.4 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 0.9 g
Monounsaturated Fat 1.7 g
Cholesterol 1.0 mg
Sodium 28.0 mg
Potassium 174.8 mg
Total Carbohydrate 29.5 g
Dietary Fiber 2.5 g
Sugars 2.8 g
Protein 4.5 g