sweet potato

day eight: the chopped edition

Posted on by thedingismything

Before we started doing Whole 30, The Husband and I loved watching the Food Network. Now, of course, it’s a little like torture. I just can’t bring myself to watch our beloved Bobby Flay make one more waffle with bruléed bananas on top, no matter how darn cute he is. (I’m not alone on this one. The Husband has a pretty big man crush on him, too.)

But our absolute favorite show is “Chopped” – where the contestants get a basket of four wacky ingredients and have to make a gourmet dish out of them in a certain amount of time.

From time to time, when my dinner routine has become … well, routine, I will play my own game of Chopped with whatever I’ve got on hand in my fridge and pantry. I’ll take a protein and veggies and some cooking staples and try to make some sort of complete meal out of them.

Last night I took my Chopped game to the Whole 30 cookbook. I had chicken thighs in my fridge, a shit ton of sweet potatoes, and lots of greens. In the poultry section I found a recipe called Melissa’s Chicken Hash, which looked pretty darn good. It called for boneless chicken thighs (Check!), one sweet potato (Check!), spinach (Check!), a granny smith apple (Amazingly, check!), red pepper flakes (Check!) and walnuts (Nope! But I did have cashews. Close enough…).

Perfect, right?

Ha.

My brain was kinda on another planet, so things were off to a rocky start from the get-go. I forgot to cut the chicken into smaller pieces before throwing them in the pan. And in the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t realize we were out of walnuts until I’d already prepped every other ingredient and the chicken was in the pan. I had to grab our container of mixed nuts and frantically fish out all the cashews.

After only a few steps, it began to sink in that my dish wasn’t going to look anything like the picture in the book. Melissa, please.

Here’s the comparison. It’s pretty obvious which is which.

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One thing that made a big difference is that I don’t have a veggie spiralizer, which – although it doesn’t explicitly spell out in the text – I’m pretty sure that’s how the picture looked as good as it did. I used a box grater to grate the sweet potato, so it came out pretty mushy after being cooked.

The Chopped judges score the contestants on taste, use of basket ingredients, and appearance. I failed miserably on appearance. But The Husband gave me a thumbs up on the taste. I think he said something like, “If you didn’t know what it was supposed to look like, it would be really good.”

Yep.

Note: This is a re-post from the Tumblr version of this blog. It originally ran on April 5, 2016.

whole30: day four.

Posted on by thedingismything

Alright. Most days this week, I’ve been a little gloomy. Self-pitying, even. But not today.

Today, I gotta brag.

Day 4 was a home run, guys. Start to finish, I think it was my best day yet.

For breakfast, I had diced potatoes and bell peppers, my new favorite Whole 30 compliant chicken sausage and an egg. Lunch was half a bell pepper filled with tuna salad (with my homemade mayo I made for Day 1. And dinner was … well. Dinner was amazing.

I found this recipe for Loaded Turkey Stuffed Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes on paleOMG.com and thought that with a name like that, you really couldn’t go wrong.

Holy smokes, it was every bit as good as it sounded. And easy, too!

The recipe called for the traditional yellow sweet potatoes, but I’m a sucker for the orange ones. (I think these are technically yams?) I followed the writer’s instructions exactly, and it all worked out perfectly. Her suggestion about not getting too close to the skin when scooping out the ooey gooey yummy middles was spot on.

The turkey is seasoned with chili powder, paprika and an alarming amount of hot sauce. We used Cholula because it’s Whole 30 compliant. I was a wee bit worried, but the sweetness of the potato balanced out the heat nicely.

After I stuffed the filling in the potatoes and popped them back in the oven, I threw some Brussels sprouts in a pan to get something green on the plate. Super simple to make in a dash: just cut ‘em in half, add them to a hot nonstick pan with a smidge of coconut oil, add a little S&P and don’t let them burn. Although, personally, I like a little char on mine.

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This dinner was a success, and The Husband already asked if we can make this even after Whole 30. Um. I want to eat it again tomorrow night!

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So one quick note for anyone thinking of reasons NOT to do Whole 30. I’m guessing this all sounds like it takes a lot of time to prepare everything, and you might be thinking you don’t have hours to dedicate to cooking each day. I thought the same thing at first, too. But I’ve learned quickly that there are some easy shortcuts that will help for those days when you’re pressed for time. One of the biggest, easiest tips is to make a dinner that is big enough so there will be leftovers you can pack for lunch the next day. If you don’t like eating the same thing twice, then you’re not making food that is yummy enough. I could eat those flipping stuffed sweet potatoes every darn day.

I’m going to be totally honest. Remembering to prep your food ahead of time is the hardest part. The night of Day 3, we were settled on the couch watching TV when I remembered I didn’t have anything put together for lunch the following day. It was 9:30 at night, but I got up and whipped up my tuna, stuffed it in the bell pepper boat, threw some veggies in a baggie and was back on my ass in time for The Husband to make me suffer through the end of “World War Z.”

The potatoes I had for breakfast? Came already cut up. Our market has a nice little space in the produce section with fresh cut vegetables ready to bring home and cook. I’ll admit some aren’t worth the price. Like, I’m perfectly capable of buying a zucchini and squash and slicing them up on my own instead of paying $5 for the already sliced package of them. But other things – like the pre-cut butternut squash – totally worth it. These diced potatoes and peppers were $2.99 for a good size container. It was enough to feed both of us for two breakfasts.

As long as you’re able to think about these things ahead of time, this is an easy lifestyle to maintain. And it gets easier, the more you train yourself to do it. I can already tell you what I’m having for my next two meals. We got in a habit of waiting until late in the the afternoon to think about dinner, and by that time we’re usually too tired to develop a game plan. When it gets to that point, it’s easy to just say “Screw it, let’s go out!” By the end of the night you’ve eaten an extra 1,000 calories, probably had a drink or two, and spent $50 or more. Total dollar value for my Day 4 food was probably between $10 and $12. AND I got to eat a super duper delicious dinner.

Like I said: Home run.

Note: This is a re-post from the Tumblr version of this blog. It originally ran on April 1, 2016.