Hello! I KNOW, this is me blogging for what, the third time in a week, or something like that? Don’t keel over in shock. I’ve finally come up with a Plan that I think might see me blogging more regularly–but then again, I’m currently Not At Work (because surgery), and we all know that full time teaching tends to play havoc with my most carefully laid plans all the time. So. Blogging: I have a plan; we’ll see if it survives contact with the enemy next week 😉
Anyway the net result of this is that a) you’ll hopefully have more blog posts to read, but the corollary is that b) random topics. I can’t be thinky and deep all the time (AH HA HA MY POSTS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THINKY AND DEEP WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING SHUT UP) so prepare for more randomness.
On that note, dinner. 1) Due to my recently acquired gallbladderlessness, I have to, er, tinker with the way I’ve been eating. Not outright change, but definitely, undeniably tinker. It’s possible that you don’t know, but I’m vegetarian, and have been my whole life. I’m not vegan, though, and I love me some dairy. Sadly, that’s part of the problem: I love me some dairy a little too much. Animals fats are high on the list of things that can exacerbate my digestive system now, so urgh, I have to learn to cook without cheese at every meal. (Meals without some variety of cheese? What even IS this?)
2) In my attempt to establish more regular blogging, I decided alliteratively that Mondays shall hence with be Made-it Mondays, wherein I can post pictures/evidence of something non-writingish that I have recently made. Dual purposes: a) I believe strongly that writers, as well as every other type of person in existence, should fundamentally be creative people. Being creative is soul nourishing, character developing, anxiety liberating, and a perfect antidote to an overly capitalist/consumerist society. People who are alive create; people who aren’t consume. (For the purposes of this argument, assume ‘create’ is defined in the broadest sense possible.) And b) this will force me to both i) make time to pursue my other creative hobbies that tend to fall by the wayside (music, drawing, photography, cooking, baking, building lego sculptures, etc :D) and ii) acknowledge the act of creation in the mundane. Because sometimes, like today, the most blog-worthy thing I created was dinner. But you know what? That’s totally okay, because creating food is still creating, and when you look at it that way making dinner is no longer drudgery, and is instead a creative and interesting endeavour 🙂
So! All of that preamble aside, dinner! I’ve had my eye on this recipe on Smitten Kitchen’s blog since Deb posted it because I am TOTALLY ADDICTED to all things sweet potato AND all things involving baked vegetables, and this not only ticked both those boxes BUT so long as I kept the yogurt dressing to a minimum it also fit my other ‘dietary requirement’ bills (yay non-animal protein). (sigh).
The recipe is Roasted Yams and Chickpeas with Yogurt and it’s pretty much as it says on the can, except that the title neglects to mention the delicious spicy kick from the chilli and paprika, and the sour OM NOM from the Greek yogurt and lime juice. Either way, it was dead simple to make, incredibly tasty,* and it’s going on my regular roster – albeit as an Amy lunch food rather than dinner, since Mr 4 is currently incompatible with orange vegetables** and Mr Laurens was not a giant fan of the sum total of the parts.
Anyway. Crunchy, sweet, sour, spicy, and with a good hit of protein. Dead easy to make. Good weekday food. The only thing I changed in the recipe was the amount of lime juice – I only used one lime 🙂
* So long as you’re a comparable sweet potato freak, I guess. Husband was not a massive fan.
** Though strangely enough carrots are still okay. Go figure. Still, better than my “I will not eat anything but corn kernels and cottage cheese” phase at an approximately similar age, I guess.