Sweet Potato Quiche - an inspired post...

A Few days ago, my favorite Hotass posted a link to a video recipe. A recipe that was for quiche, but used very thinly sliced sweet potato slices layered to make the crust. One kitchen gadget that I have that I don't use as much as I should is my mandoline. The Aussie got it for me for my birthday several years back, and it makes the best thin sliced anything. Including fingers, but that's another story. Speaking of stories, this post is actually inspired by a person called North, who loves healthy eating. ;)

I pretty much always have sweet potatoes on hand, so I decided that this would be a great recipe to make for lunch. To make this, you'll need the following:

1 large sweet potato, peeled and very thinly sliced
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 bag of baby greens (kale, spinach, etc)
2 ounces shredded cheese (I used an alpine style that I had on hand)
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk
spices: salt, pepper, garlic powder, nutmeg, cayenne
cooking spray
olive oil

Thinly slice a large sweet potato. Spray your pie pan with quick release spray, and layer the slices on the bottom and sides of the pan. Cut slices in half to form the side layer. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

While the crust bakes, drizzle some olive oil in to a hot pan. Toss in a thinly sliced onion (I had half of a very large onion in the refrigerator). Cook over medium high heat for about 5 minutes until the onion softens. Next, add in several handfuls of greens. The video used half of a bag of baby spinach. I am not a fan of spinach these days (it makes a squeaky feeling on my teeth when I eat it) so I used a package of baby kale. In hindsight, I would chop the baby kale in to small pieces to make cutting the pie easier. Cook for 5-10 minutes, until the greens are wilted. Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a pinch of nutmeg.

In a bowl, whisk together 4 eggs and half a cup of milk. Add in 1/2 t of salt, several grinds of black pepper (I love black pepper, so I used a lot of it), and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

Layer the greens and onions in the pie shell, distributing fairly evenly.
 

Top the greens with 2 ounces of shredded cheese.

 Pour the egg mixture over the greens and cheese. Bake for 35 minutes at 375 degrees.

Slice and enjoy!

A Ninja, A Sweet Potato and A Waffle Iron Walked In To A Kitchen ...

Welcome to Trash The Kitchen Tuesday! Actually, I trash the kitchen most days, if I'm cooking. I like to cook. Cleaning up, not so much. And may I say, having a microwave oven that also works as an Advantium speed oven lets me trash the kitchen so much quicker!

Yesterday, for my #30DaysOfThankful I posted a picture of my kitchen. After reading Carla's post, Meet My Friend Melvin, I realized that I let way too much food spoil. Not everyone can, after paying their rent, their bills, their child support, etc, afford to feed themselves. This morning, pondering what to have for breakfast, I decide to use up some things that I had in the pantry and the fridge: two partial onions (one red, one white), half a poblano pepper that was on its last legs, two sweet potatoes that were growing alien tentacles, err, sprouting, and one regular baking potato. The first thing that came to mind was trying to make waffle iron hash brown/latkes, but I didn't want to do a lot of shredding. So, I washed off all of the sweet potatoes and threw them in the Advantium to bake. In the meantime, I chopped up the onions and minced the poblano. When I got the potatoes out, they were only partially cooked, so I scooped out what was soft and put the rest back in to cook more. I took the cooked potato and put it in to my new Ninja. Ninjas rock, by the way. I added most of the onion and half of the poblano, along with a splash of milk. I blended that until it was fairly smooth, then I cracked in two eggs and blended again until it was smooth, like a batter. (Oh, yes, that is savory jerky from Rachel Ray, another awesome Fitbloggin sponsor, in the background. I picked it up yesterday at the grocery store. The dogs love it.)

By this time, the rest of the potatoes were cooked well enough, so I scooped them out and put them in to a bowl, along with the rest of the chopped onion and poblano pepper. Using a fork, I mashed the mixture until there were only small lumps.

 In went the Ninja batter, along with a pinch of salt, and I mixed everything together.

Next, I added a cup of Bob's Red Mill GF Flour Mixture (feel free to use regular flour), half a cup at a time, mixing to incorporate the flour and leave no lumps. I looked at it and thought, this would be really  nice with a side of bacon. I don't have bacon. :(  Oh, wait. YES, I HAVE BACON!! Thank you, Costco. I had a bag of bacon crumbles in the freezer. Forget having bacon on the side. I'm having bacon IN my sweet potato waffles.

I let the batter rest while the waffle iron heated up. My finger can attest that it heats up very quickly, thank you very much. I drizzle a little olive oil on the waffle iron and spoon in the batter, spreading it out fairly evenly. Pressing down, I anxiously await the light to go from red to green. Yay! It worked!

Breakfast dilemma solved, and I didn't let foods go to waste. Savory sweet potato waffles, topped with a little butter. To make it even more sweet/savory, after I took this picture, I spread a little bit of my maple butter from Raymond Sugarhouse in Hartland, VT.  If you love all things maple, and like to support small businesses, please consider ordering from them. Everything I have tried of theirs (maple syrup, maple candy, maple butter, maple cream, maple crunch peanut butter and maple crunch peanuts) are amazing.

Messy Meatballs

The other day, I saw a picture of some breakfast meatballs on the ever changing Book Of Face. I frequently eat leftovers for breakfast, so the idea of breakfast meatballs appealed to me. If you think about it, meatballs have the potential to be the perfect eat at your desk finger food. Since I already had breakfast, I set about to make these lunch meatballs. During my lunch hour, too. Perfect. The original recipe called for shredding and then re-shredding the sweet potato in your food processor, followed by the onion, followed by the mushrooms... Ain't nobody got time for that. I'd be starving until next week. I remembered what the demo guy at Costco said about using a Vitamix to finely chop veggies (You add a lot of water, blend them, then drain), so I tried it. It worked really well. To a point. I really should have drained the veggies longer. The mixture was really moist (I hate that word) so I added in two whisked eggs as binder. Hmm. Still to wet. What absorbs liquids. Ding ding ding. Chia seeds. So I have extra goodness in the form of chia. And they tasted really good, too. Win-win-win.

Messy Yummy Meatballs

1 sweet potato, finely grated
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 cup mushrooms, finely chopped
2 cups baby spinach, blended
3 Italian sausage links (mine were mild), removed from casings
1/2 pound lean ground pork
6 slices of bacon, cooked very crisp, crumbled
2 eggs, whisked
1/4 cup of chia seeds
1 T garlic powder
1 T Worcestershire Sauce

Preheat the oven to 375.

Cook the bacon strips until they're super crisp. Crumble and set aside.

Next, shred-chop-blend the peeled sweet potato, onion, mushrooms and spinach. I blend-chopped and drained the peeled sweet potato, the onion, the mushrooms and the spinach, then combined them in a large bowl.

Next, add in the sausage and the ground pork, mixing well. Whisk the eggs and work in to the sausage and veggie mixture. Mix in the chia seeds, garlic powder, Worcestershire sauce and the bacon crumbles.  

Form in to 1 1/2 inch meatballs and place on a foil covered baking sheet. You may like to spray with non-stick cooking spray to make removal easier.  Bake the little yummies for 30 minutes. 

I didn't bake up the entire mixture, but I plugged the recipe in to my My Fitness Pal account so that I could track lunch. Estimating that the entire batch would make 8 servings, the per-serving nutrition comes out to 261 calories, 12 grams of carbohydrates, 18 grams of fat, 16 grams of protein, 390 grams of sodium, and 4 grams of fiber.


Enjoy!