Sweet potato stars as the main course

Sweet Patooty dresses for dinner

Sweet potato’s qualities

Our Sweet Patooty is not just another pretty face. There’s so much goodness under her skin, I hardly know where to start. She comes from a large family.  There are at least 18 relatives you might meet at the supermarket. All of them bring great qualities to the table. Some have orange or reddish skins, while others are purple-skinned. The purple ones can have white or purple flesh. But we don’t discriminate based on the color of the skin…they are all equally sweet inside!

Our Sweet Potato is only distantly related to the common table potato that I grew up seeing on nearly every dinner plate. But she’s so much more agreeable! Her starch is complex and requires more time to digest, slowly releasing its sugars into the blood. When sweet potatoes are on the menu, our pancreas isn’t stressed by sugar spikes. But there’s something more… a very special protein hormone that actually improves blood sugar regulation, even in diabetics.

A sweet potato vine peeks shyly from behind a flowering begonia. Vitamin A in the tuber helps you see such beauty better.

Like carrots, another bright orange veggie, Sweet Potato offers amazing amounts of Vitamin A.  One cup provides 4 times more than we need in any one day. Preserve your eyesight with this colorful super food on the menu.

And that’s only for starters. Its proteins are only now revealing what great antioxidants they are, repairing cell damage caused by oxygen from the air we breath. It also relieves inflammation in our bodies through the many anthocyanins and phytonutrients that make up those lively orange and purple colors.

Choosing foods with bright colors is smart. Put a rainbow on your plate and enjoy the benefits of better health… less swelling, less joint problems, fewer headaches, fewer heart problems… the list goes on.

Don’t call this little number a yam. It’s a sweet potato, thank you very much!

A twin, the yam

Sweet Potato gets annoyed only when it’s mistakenly called a yam. Yams are from another family altogether. There are over 200 kinds and they come with a black, bark-like skin and white or lavender flesh. They are the size of a potato or much larger and are not common in North American stores.

What you need to know is that the moist-fleshed, orange-, purple-, or white-fleshed root vegetable that is often called a yam is actually a sweet potato. The only kind of potato I eat these days is sweet potatoes. One day, though, I’d love to get my hands on those gorgeous lavender yams!

Cooking these tubers

Two things to keep in mind when cooking sweet potatoes: 1) Always add a little healthy fat to the mix. It’s needed to improve absorption of the vitamin A this veggie delivers. 2) Steaming or boiling the flesh disables a component of the potato that breaks the anthocyanins down. We want to get as many as those powerful antioxidants into our bodies as possible. If roasting sweet potatoes, I recommend steaming them first for 2 minutes for maximum health benefits.

Baked sweet potato with pepper and garlic black beans, flavored with goats cheese, basil, and walnuts
Serves two

• 1 medium sweet potato (my favorite is the red-skinned ones with white flesh)
• 1 tablespoon organic coconut or canola oil
• 1 tablespoon (2-3 cloves) garlic, chopped finely
• 1/2 medium pepper, chopped finely (I used red, but if you can find hotter versions, go ahead)
• ¼ cup chopped onion
• 1 cup black beans  (if canned, rinse well!)
• 2 ounces creamy goats cheese
• 2 tablespoons Greek yogurt
• 2 tablespoons homemade taco spice (recipe here)
• sea salt to taste
• ¼ cup walnuts coarsely crushed
• finely chopped basil to garnish

1. Scrub well, then steam the potato for two minutes over boiling water.
2. Dry well, then grease the potato skin with a little oil. Make a few fork holes to allow steam to escape. Roast it in the oven at 425°F for 45 minutes. Poke it with a fork to see if it has softened through and through.
3. While the potato is baking, fry the onions, peppers and garlic in the oil over low-medium heat in a small pan.
4. Add the beans and cover. Allow to cook on low for about 5-7 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon taco spice, stir well and remove from heat.
5. In a medium bowl, cream the goats cheese with the yogurt and 1 tablespoon of taco spice.
6. Cut the sweet potato in half. Gently remove the flesh from each half, being careful not to tear the skin. Mash the flesh into the cheese mixture. Spoon half of the cheese mixture back into each of the potato shells.
7. Top with the bean mixture and return to the oven for 10 minutes with heat reduced to 300°F.

When ready to serve, garnish each with some walnuts and chopped basil. You can even add a drizzle of liquid honey if you like, but I didn’t. This dish tasted delicious and is packed with amazing nutrients.

Related links

• The World’s healthiest Foods  Sweet potato’s health benefits, scientific references. From the website of The George Mateljan Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation with no commercial interests or advertising, a wealth of information on healthy eating.
• Sweet potato makes flaky scones a snap  Check out other ways to use sweet potatoes and control blood sugar.
• Sweet potato pancakes for Valentines Day Another way to serve the world’s healthiest vegetable.