Sweet Potatoes and Other Lunches

Happy Thanksgiving to all that live in the US. This is not a Thanksgiving post, but as I'm out eating way too much food right now I thought I would post what I've been eating over the last week for lunch. I finally broke into my sweet potato stash as they are now not as starchy and are taking on a nice mildly sweet flavor so two will feature that wonderful vegetable.

The first up is a wonderful recipe that contains sweet potatoes, onions, amaretto, and thyme. It also called for olive oil, but I didn't think olive oil would go as well as coconut oil, so I used that instead. I was amazed by how delicious it was. I think I'll stick with coconut oil every time I cook sweet potatoes it is such a perfect complement. When this was cooking I smelled the thyme overwhelmingly in the dish. I really thought thyme was a weird mix with amaretto and didn't like the scent all that much. But by the time it was finished cooking, the taste was fabulous.

My next meal was leftover salmon. I wanted to make a pasta dish. The recipe I choose wasn't quite right as I was doing a salmon that was already cooked, but I just shredded it and mixed it in. I also used cooked chard as I had no fresh spinach. It needed more chard. It really did. Too much pasta for me and not enough other stuff. I could have chopped the chard fine and mixed it in too. Of course one of the main problems was that it also called for capers and I didn't have any. Capers would have been very nice, but I don't stock them in my pantry. It isn't an ingredient that I use very often.

My last dish was a soup. I was looking for recipes that had sweet potatoes in them and ran across a cook from Mexico that had a quinoa and sweet potato soup. It had peppers and such that I couldn't eat. But I liked the idea of a sweet potato soup with quinoa. Very healthy. So I made one based on a very mild curry. You know I can't eat curry since I can't eat peppers. So the first part was to make a curry powder without peppers.

Daphne's Curry Powder

• 1/4 c ground coriander
• 2 T ground cumin
• 1 1/2 T ground turmeric
• 1 T ground cardamom
• 1 T ground cinnamon
• 1 t ground mustard
• 1 t ground fenugreek
• 1 t ground ginger

Of course if anyone else wants to use it they ought to put some cayenne pepper or other chili powder into it.

Daphne's Quinoa and Sweet Potato Soup

• 4 T coconut oil
• 1 onion diced
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 1 cup quinoa
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 lb ham cubed
• 2 t curry powder
• 1/4 lb kale chopped small
• 1 cup corn
• 3/4 t salt
• 2-3 cups sweet potatoes cubed
• 2 T cilantro chopped
• 2 T chives chopped
• Greek yogurt

Soak the quinoa for five minutes in water. Drain and rinse. In 2 T oil, saute the onions until translucent. Add garlic and quinoa. Saute until lightly toasted. Add stock, water, ham, curry powder, kale, corn, and salt. Cook for 30 minutes or until quinoa is soft. While that is cooking, saute the sweet potatoes in the remaining oil until browned but not mushy. When the quinoa is done, take off the heat and add the sweet potatoes, cilantro, and chives. Mix a tablespoon or more yogurt into the soup before eating. Now I know most would use the cilantro, chives, and yogurt as a garnish, but I like mixing things in when I don't have company. I know, not as pretty. But very practical.