All does anyone have any healthy favorite recipes?
I do a
Sweet Potato Smoothie for meal #2, usually around 6:30am or so. Really easy & tasty.
Ingredients:
1. 1/2 a large Sweet potato
2. 1.5 cups Vanilla almond milk
3. Pumpkin pie spice (to taste)
* McCormick sells a pre-made pumpkin pie spice mix - it has cinnamon, nutmeg, etc. Cinnamon works too, and it's also good without any spices added.
* I think vanilla almond milk tastes the best. However, soymilk has more protein (7 to 9 grams, depending on the brand). Lately I've been using "Very Vanilla Soymilk" by Silk (without any added spices) and it's pretty good, although it has 16 grams of sugar per cup (8 grams for vanilla and 1 gram for unsweetened). If you want to go the unsweetened milk route, adding some honey is also really tasty (about 17 grams of sugar per tablespoon).
Directions:
1. Cook sweet potato. I use a large one - wash it, poke holes in it with a fork or knife, and microwave for 3 minutes per side, plus another minute (7 minutes total for a big one). I use half for one drink, and usually eat the other half with lunch.
2. Remove the skin & put the half the sweet potato in the blender (or the whole one if you're hungry). If you cut it in half length-wise, you can just squeeze it out, otherwise just use a spoon - faster than cutting off the skin with a knife.
3. Cover the sweet potato with vanilla almond milk, add some pumpkin pie spice, and blend well.
4. Pour the mix into a cup. Add another half a cup of vanilla milk. Stir with a butter knife. Add straw. Enjoy.
It's best cold. Usually blending will cool the sweet potato down if you just cooked it, and adding more milk after you pour it will make it cool. Otherwise you can add some ice or cook the sweet potato beforehand and put it in the fridge. Tastes best colder.
With soymilk, this also makes a nice protein supplement. Westsoy brand soymilk has 9 grams of protein per cup and Silk has 7 grams of protein per cup; my recipe uses 1.5 cups. A large sweet potato has 4 grams of protein; my recipe uses half of one. So one drink can have between 12 and 15 grams of protein - sort of an all-natural, great-tasting protein shake! If you eat it as a side to a protein meal (like tuna or chicken), it's an easy way to get your protein requirement in, without having to use a processed energy bar or a protein shake.