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Sweet Potato Pasta
Where I grew up, there is no fall. There is only extended summer. Which is unfortunate because now that I am blessed enough to live in a 4-season town, Autumn is one of my favorite times of year. It’s the beautiful colors and gorgeous trees, the fun a festive flavors and comfy sweaters.
Sweet Potato is one of those flavors that pops up around this time of year, but I like to eat them all year long. Kerri and I once again experimented in the kitchen, a little cautious after our failed cheerio disaster. The result: A Creamy Sweet Potato Pasta made with greek yogurt, sweet potatoes, whole wheat rotini, spinach and some flax seeds.
Sweet Potato Pasta:
2 Cups Whole Wheat Pasta
2 medium Sweet Potatoes
1/2 Cup Non-fat Milk
1/3 Cup Plain Non-fat Greek Yogurt
1 Cup Spinach
Drizzle of Olive Oil
Garlic and Herb Seasoning
Pinch of Flax Seeds
1.) Wash and pierce sweet potatoes. Microwave for 10 minutes until soft.
2.) Peel off skins (eat or discard) and mash together the sweet potato, milk, greek yogurt, and seasoning.
3.) Meanwhile, boil noodles until cooked. Drain, leaving 3/4 Cup of water with noodles.
4.) In a large saucepan, drizzled with olive oil, add sweet potato mixture. Add Spinach. Bring to heat until spinach cooks down.
5.) Add in pasta and water. Mix until well-blended; top serving with flax seeds.
It was easy enough to make even in the dorm kitchen and we loved it! Even though it’s only the beginning of October, it already feels like Thanksgiving is near. All the stores have their festive fall decorations and so many websites have their Thanksgiving recipes…I like the holiday as much as the next person, but geez can we slow down?! I need all the time I can get to bake the ridiculous amount of autumn recipes I found on Pinterest ;)
If you like sweet potatoes, you may also like: Stuffed Sweet Potato
Perfecting the Homemade Pizza
Last night I had a failed attempt at making a dorm room dinner-style mini pizza. The cheese didn’t melt, the crust wasn’t right…there was much room for improvement. While I work on perfecting that, I will share an already-exceptional recipe for my family’s homemade pizzas!
If you are a thin-crust person, you will not like this recipe. These are the fluffiest, thickest pizzas I’ve ever had and I just love it! Plus the blend of white and wheat flour makes them so hearty and adds just the right texture.
For the past year, my family has experimented with pizzas, trying every version you can think of: spicy Thai pizza, pesto shrimp pizza, cheeseburger pizza, BBQ chicken pizza. But what we’ve really perfected is the Crust:
It all sort of happened by accident. You see, 1 teaspoon of yeast was mistaken for 1 Tablespoon and while I would normally expect that kind of baking error to result in some sort of catastrophe, that extra 2 teaspoons of yeast created the lightest and fluffiest, best pizza crust we’ve ever had. From then on, we triple the yeast :P
In a bread maker, combine:
10 oz Water
3/4 tsp salt
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
2 cups white flour
2 cups Whole wheat flour
1 1/2 Tablespoons dry active yeast
Let it work in the bread maker for 90 minutes, then roll out onto a surface sprinkled with cornmeal and top with your favorite toppings. On this pizza, we piled regular pizza sauce with thick-cut black forrest ham, cashews, pineapple chunks, and fresh mozzerella (I LOVE how the mozzerella chunks look). Cook on a pizza stone (or cookie sheet if you do not have a pizza stone) at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, until the crust is golden. And get ready for the softest pizza crust of your life:
In other news… Today, I will be hitting the pool after my classes in my first “workout” since returning to school! So I am one happy camper. It has been 55 days since surgery, nearly two months. While some progress has been made, there’s still a lot of swelling to go down and we are waiting for the fat graft to soften before I can return to normal running. So swimming it is!
If you have a different favorite pizza recipe or topping, please share! I love trying new ingredients. Also, are you a Pinterest addict like me? Follow me on Pinterest and Pin this here: 
Dorm Room Dinner: Stuffed Sweet Potato
To me, a dinner should have a balanced amount of protein, vegetables and complex carbs. A plate of pasta is not complete without some grilled chicken and a sauce full of veggies! When you’re limited to cooking in a dorm room or on a budget, that can get a little tricky. It means buying more groceries and more cooking preparation. But I came up with this dinner that was perfectly balanced using only 4 ingredients in my residence hall community kitchen:
Dinner for One
It’s healthy, it’s inexpensive, and it was delicious :)
This insanely easy “Recipe”
You will need: one half of a ridiculously large sweet potato. Package of frozen veggies (I used the stir-fry blend) thawed. 1 piece of pre-grilled chicken (unless you’re into handling raw meat…which I am not). 1 wedge Laughing Cow Light cheese (35 calories?! Score!).
1. Bake half a sweet potato at 400 degrees for 30 minutes
2. Take it out of the oven and slice it down the middle. (Don’t burn your fingers!) Fill the potato and the rest of the baking sheet with your veggies and sliced chicken.
3. Bake for another 10 minutes. Let it cool for a couple of minutes before crumbling on the cheese and devouring while it’s warm.
You have lean protein from the white chicken meat, complex carbs and fiber from the sweet potato and all the vitamins from the vegetable blend. Plus it’s a filling meal (and so colorful)!
There are so many alternatives to Top Ramen no matter what you’re living situation. This meal literally comes out to about $2.90 per serving and about 300 calories. That’s a heck of a lot better than $1.00 and 1000 calories!
Thanks to Pinterest I’ve found a bunch of other varieties of Stuffed Sweet Potatoes including BBQ Pulled Pork and Spinach & Feta. Since sweet potatoes are so hearty and delicious I think I’ll try them all. Sure beats a hot pocket!
This and other college healthy tips and recipes can be found on the College Girl Cuisine page!
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