Sweet Potato Corn Muffins

Things didn't go exactly as planned this week. Husband was sick and not in the mood for hearty eating. I had a few sweet potatoes left that I was planning on making oven fries with, but instead I figured I'd try to make something less perishable from them. Never mind all the baking stuff I already have around the house. I found a recipe for Sweet Potato Cornbread and was off to the races.

Here are the ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup yellow cornmeal
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 sweet potatoes or 1 (16 ounce) can sweet potatoes
• 2 eggs
• 6 tablespoons milk
• 3 tablespoons oil (I used canola)

Mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately; pour into 12 muffin cups. Bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

Notes:
-Given my repeated failures baking any kind of cornbread with GF flour, I used regular old wheat baking flour just like the recipe says.
-I baked three sweet potatoes at 375 degrees for 45 minutes and probably should have kept them in there for an hour.
-I added a half teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice.
-I used light brown sugar, not regular sugar, and probably used closer to 3/4 a cup than a half.

The result was a little nutty, a little sweet, perfect for breakfast or a dinner side. I'll definitely make these again someday.

Fast Baked Salmon with Spinach Salad and Sweet Potatoes

Today was one of those crazy days where I had to really hustle to get a cooked meal on the table by 8. I had promised to do a live webcast with a group of students at 7 from home, so I left work at 5:30 on the nose, ran to the grocery and grabbed two fine-looking salmon steaks and two lemons, and was home by 6:20. Thankfully this thing took only fifteen minutes to prep, and so all I had to do was pop it in the oven and tell husband to take it out when the timer went off.

We still have a lot of sweet potatoes left over from Monday, so I decided to add those as a side dish. Add a tiny spinach salad, and this dish is near perfect!

I used my Dutch oven - one dish, easy to clean, makes food taste good.

Love you, Le Creuset.

Ingredients:

2 or however many salmon steaks you want
1/4 lemon per salmon steak
Pepper
Salt
Olive oil
Dried rosemary

Preheat oven to 400 F. Coat the bottom of your Dutch oven with olive oil. Throw in salmon steaks. Cover with salt and pepper, rosemary, and thin slices of lemon and lemon juice.

Hello, my lovelies.

 Then cover and set the timer for 20 minutes.

While that business is happening, prep your plates with the salad. I used spinach, tomato, and canned artichokes. We buy prewashed salad greens and two or three tomatoes every week, and I always keep croutons and olive oil in the house, so this wasn't anything that needed much planning. The artichokes were a find--I bought them a few weeks ago for some unknown purpose and tucked them in the back of the fridge. Obviously skip these if you are low FODMAP.

Top with a generous pour of olive oil followed by a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. Add some croutons (skip if you're not eating wheat/gluten) if you have them right before serving.

I used my last three minutes to stick the leftover sweet potatoes into a pie tin and added them to the oven, next to the salmon. Then I ran to the bedroom, where I did the webcast.

At 7:55, I emerged and was greeted by a finished but slightly lukewarm feast. Just look at all those colorful antioxidants!

One of these days I'll figure out how to take a less blurry photo.

So, how did I do?

Overall, I was really happy with this meal. And it performs well according to 4 out of 5 of my rules:

1. The rule of waste. Awesome. You buy a salmon steak, you eat the salmon steak. Plus I got to use leftovers. And I will definitely find a use for the spinach, artichokes, lemon and tomato I didn't use.

2. The rule of cost. Not so good. Salmon is expensive.

3. The rule of time. Killed it. Fifteen minutes of prep, twenty minutes of (passive chef) cooking, and quick cleanup.

4. The rule of health. Awesome. Salmon = protein, omega 3s; you've got your dark leafy greens in both the salad and the side dish; some good beta carotene and vitamin C in the other veggies and lemon juice; and decent amount of non-grain fiber.  Plus, the meal is low in FODMAPs, lower if you omit the artichokes and mushrooms.

5. The rule of Cartman? We always follow the rule of Cartman in this house. 


FACTS AND FIGURES
 
Prep time: 15 min
Servings: 2
Agony rating: 2/10. So easy! Tomatoes and lemon needed slicing, and the jar of artichokes took a while to pry open. But the only cleanup was a cutting board, a knife, two plates, two forks, a serving spoon, the pie tin for the sweet potatoes and the Dutch oven.
Taste and stuff: 8/10. Husband loved it. I thought the salmon could have used more salt and lemon.

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*


Spinach: $3.99 for a 5 oz tub; I used about 2 oz., so $2
Lemons: 2 for $1.20; I used 1/2, so $0.30
Salmon steaks: $11.79
Artichokes: $2.19 a jar; I used 1/3; so $0.73
Tomato: Guessing here, but let's say it was $.50 worth of tomato
Croutons, olive oil, vinegar, rosemary, salt, pepper: pantry staples, already bought
Total cost of stuff I had to buy special: $15.32
Cost per serving: $7.66


VERDICT: SUCCESS.

Crockpot Chicken and Sweet Potato Stew

It's January! Bitterly cold and perfect time for some hearty, healthy stew. The first food experiment: crockpot chicken and sweet potato stew, with mushrooms and salad greens. 

My gorgeous, blurry, messy melange of cost-effective nutrition conveyances.

I adapted this recipe from Eating Well. But since I am the worst chef ever, I did not make it the way they prescribed. First of all, no wine and no fresh rosemary. They both violate rule #1 of being the worst chef ever: the rule of waste. If a recipe calls for an ingredient that you can only buy in a quantity larger than what you'll use, and that ingredient will spoil if you don't use all of it, and you probably won't use the rest of it anyways, then find another ingredient. Two sprigs of rosemary? The grocery only sells packets of six and it's January so my herb garden is yielding zilch. One cup of wine? I'm not drinking much these days and wine only lasts so long.

Second, I eliminated the shallots and garlic because they're high in FODMAPs. But I kept the mushrooms. You can skip them.

Third, I have a bucket of salad greens a few days past their prime--perfect for the slow cooker.

So, let's review the ingredients. All measurements are approximate:

5-6 bone-in chicken thighs, trimmed of skin and fat (about 2 lbs)
6 sweet potatoes (about 3 lbs)
1 carton white mushrooms (mine was 8 oz but you can add more)
1 5 oz carton slightly foxed salad greens ("Organic Girl's 50/50 Spring Mix.")
1 tsp dried rosemary
3/4 c water
1 1/2 tbsp white wine vinegar (A surprisingly useful thing to have lying around.)
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

First, peel potatoes and rinse.

Then throw them into your slow cooker with some salt and oil. Toss with your hands til they are nice and coated.
 

Wash your mushrooms, slice, throw into slow cooker. Add some pepper and rosemary and stuff.

The next step is definitely skippable if you are feeling direly lazy, but today I had some free time, so I did what you're supposed to and browned the chicken legs before throwing them into the crockpot:

Yuck.

Yum.

All together now. Put the chicken into the crockpot on top of the mushrooms. Add more rosemary and salt and pepper. Throw some white wine vinegar and water in there.

 Cover and set the timer for six hours on low.

Or something.

About one or one and a half hours before you're ready to eat, throw in the salad greens. Mix the whole thing up. Don't worry, your food is probably cooked already. And what's the point of browning the chicken if it wasn't to kill all the germs?

 Put the lid back on and walk away. Come back when it's ready, and serve. There's a lot of liquid, so you might want to go for a soup plate. But if you want to discard that delicious broth, be my guest.

Well, at least it's colorful.

If you don't like the way it tastes, add more white wine vinegar or salt or pepper or whatever.

FACTS AND FIGURES
 
Prep time: 30 min
Servings: 4 or 5
Agony rating: 4/10. Potatoes need peeling, veggies need chopping, chicken needs defatting, and the browning added ten minutes to prep time and an extra dish to wash. Plus there was an extra step with the salad greens etc.
Taste and stuff: 7/10. I wasn't blown away, but it was kind of tangy in an interesting way, and I feel good two hours later. 

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*

8 oz mushrooms $1.50
1 tub salad greens $3.99
6 sweet potatoes $2.31
5 chicken thighs $4.19
Olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, dried rosemary: pantry staples, already bought
Total cost of stuff I had to buy special: $11.99
Cost per serving: $3 even for 4 servings. Less if you stretch it out.

VERDICT: SUCCESS.