Healthy Dish: Sweet Potato and Chickpeas

I often heat up sweet potatoes for my lunch. They take no more than 5 minutes in my microwave, so it's fast and easy. One day, I decided to take my sweet potato and make it more nutritious by adding chickpeas. There's a local store that makes really good chickpeas and we often have them in the house. I also never usually add spices because I felt that sweet potatoes were good on their own, but I was doing healthy and there are many benefits associated with spices, so I decided to add them in this time. The result was amazing, and perfect for a chilly day, the spices warm you up and totally transform the sweet potato. Perfect for a chilly fall day. The picture does show a lot of chickpeas, you don't need to add that much, it may have actually been a little too much. You can serve this for dinner, or as a side as well.

Sweet Potato with Chickpeas

1 medium sweet potato-washed and scrubbed

store bought chickpeas (prepared)

Spices to taste if you don't like any of these just leave it out-Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Fennel Seed, Cumin

1. Cut an X in your sweet potato. Bake your sweet potato, this can be done in 5 minutes in your microwave. If you don't mind waiting longer, this can be done at 350 in your oven for an hour.

2. Peel and Cube Sweet Potatoes, you can leave the peel on if you'd like.

3. Spice to taste

4. Stir in generous amount of pre-seasoned store bought chickpeas.*

Other ideas for add-ins include baby spinach leaves, raw or lightly sauteed. You can also add other sweet squashes. It's very open-ended, so play around have fun.

*Please note that if using a canned chickpeas recipe make sure to rinse them and let them dry on a paper towel, as well as removing loose skins. You can always use your own chickpea recipe and/or use chickpeas you have sitting in the fridge.

Here is a recipe that may be somewhat similar to the prepared chickpeas that I use:

Chickpea Recipe-if you make this recipe, leave out the olives, tomatoes, scallions and parsley/cilantro for use in the above dish.

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Chocolate Larabars

Originally I was going to call these Larabar Brownies. Okay they're not Larabars and they're not brownies. Now you're thinking what a misleading title. They remind me of Larabars in terms of ingredients and looks.  As soon as I taste it, I'll let you know how it fares in the taste department. I like Brownies, never really had a Larabar that I liked, they're just okay.

Raw Brownie or Chocolate Larabars Recipe

So they don't really meet the tastes like Brownies claim, but they're not bad. Picky eaters are likely to hate it, at least that's how it went down in my house. Would I make it again? Yes, but not as a brownie substitute. One kid asked me if it was cake. So in the looks department, I guess it worked, although it doesn't quite look right. Maybe this kid is just used to seeing strange food. He did make a comment later that he didn't care for them. Taste wise not so much. They're good, but they're not a brownie.
My notes on this one are: If you're not used to baking with dates, there are pits that need to be removed. I sopped up extra oil on top probably from the dates with a paper towel.

Healthy Smoothies

Usually people talk about smoothies in the summer time. Everyone knows that smoothies are great after you've had oral surgery when you can only eat smooth, or soft items. After mine I actually stuck mostly to vanilla Greek Yogurt. But I believe smoothie should be for anytime, they're pretty easy to whip up and healthy too. If you go to a store and pick up a smoothie, it will often contain ice cream and milk. Yep, one of my favorite smoothies from a local store is strawberry and it is not cheap. I finally wised up and watched them make it. About 3 scoops of strawberry ice cream and a splash of milk all blended up for a medium smoothie or small (it only comes in medium and large). I was like that's it. I could make that myself.

While I like the convenience of buying, I like to know what's going into my food. I'm trying to eat healthier and knew I wouldn't want to buy a smoothie after my oral surgery. I found quite a few healthy smoothie recipes online and ended up using none of those. Some of them had tofu or other weird ingredients in them. Okay tofu is not really weird, but I try to stay away from soy type products. Although there are instances where I will use those ingredients, I might even do a post about certain instances. Basically I felt it was unnecessary in a smoothie.

I made my own smoothie recipe and hoped it would work.

Mixed Fruit Smoothie

1 plain Greek Yogurt*

frozen mixed fruit (it was approximately a cup)

honey to taste**

splash of nonfat milk

I blended it all together. I did have to open the lid of the blender a few times and push the fruit to the bottom, so it would get blended. I'm wondering if I partially thawed it, if it would have worked a little better. 

Mixed Fruit Smoothie

Chunky Mango Smoothie

1 plain Greek Yogurt

Frozen Mango (approximately a cup)
honey to taste (optional)**

Splash of nonfat milk 

Blend it all together. Some pieces didn't get blended, that's why this one is called chunky, if you want it thinner add more milk.

*I think other flavors would work, although I would leave out the honey if using other flavors.

**Depending on the fruit and yogurt you're using, you might not need honey, I find the plain yogurt needs a little sweetener for my taste, so I added honey and this way I'm in control of how much sweetener is added.

Chunky Mango Smoothie