I love how I eat the meal plan for a week and then I decide to look up the nutritional benefits of a sweet potato. Of course! Well I knew it has a lower glycemic index than a regular potato and must have some extra nutrients since it's orange but wow the vit A it has is off the charts. No really it is. Look! (it's at the bottom of my post)
I'm not sure how much you know about Tosca Reno and her cooler plan, but basically for cooler 1,( named so because you could potentially pack everything into a cooler for the day), is about fast weight loss using clean foods only. Which means, nothing processes, no sugar, no salt, no fatty meats and the minimum requirement of fat, no dairy, no bread, no spreads or salad dressings (except lemon juice and balsamic) = I created my own salad dressings within these limitations and they are awesome, opps sorry getting back to the can't list no spreads or juice. (well I guess I'm cheating on the juice thing since I'm juicing my veggies because I can't seem to eat the required 10 handfuls- minimum). You do eat 1 hand sized sweet potato a day and a handful or 1/2 cup amount of whole grains (ex. oats, quinoa, brown rice, millet or creme of wheat). Oh ya and the star of this plan is 5 palm sized servings of lean protein (can be a protein powder also- unsweetened and natural). Now don't panic, she does have other cooler plan options. Or make up your own like my friend Maxine does 1.5. Cool eh!
So here I am again, it's Saturday night and I'm preparing some fast foods for next week. I tried a sweet potato pancake with oats from this website (
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/sweet-potato-pancakes-2/detail.aspx) but I didn't really like it so I changed it. To start I halved the recipe, didn't add the molasses or oil, used only egg whites and instead of yogourt I mixed in almond milk, apple sauce and lemon juice. I processed everything in my food processor and cooked them up. The taste wasn't bad (the cinnamon and vanilla are a nice touch) but I found I had to make them really flat for the insides to cook. So they were more like a crunchy cookie. My youngest son enjoyed them! I will have them in the morning when everyone else is chowing down on pancakes at my son birthday party. This is why I spend time preparing food, to avoid the temptations.
My second sweet potato endeavor was making more chips. I feel like they are my saving grace. They are like junk food to me now! The oven is at 400F, slice them up finely and coat with a bit of olive oil and don't take your face away from the window because when they start to brown they will turn black in seconds.
My third go at the sweet potato was a curry vegetable soup with tofu. Here are the pics.
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| The soup is basically the same as my last one, but I modified it a bit. I used 2 whole sweet potatoes skin on, 2 handfuls of celery, 2 roma tomatoes, 1 cup each zucchini and spaghetti squash, the container of no salt added broth by Campbells, some garlic powder, ginger and lots of mild curry powder. I let it boil till the potatoes were soft, took it off the heat added 2 giant tightly packed handfuls of spinach and processed it with my hand blender. Then I poured the soup over each serving of chopped tofu with some extra curry powder. |
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| I also made an other batch of chili this time with zucchini and mushrooms (so basically the same recipe as last time minus the broccoli and so many peppers)! |
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| Curried sweet potato and veggie soup with tofu. |
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| http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=64 | | | |
ps. The article mentions how studies show that the vitamin A is better absorbed with the presence of healthy fats (ex. olive oil, coconut oil etc..). I will have to do that!
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