30 Ways to Eat Sweet Potatoes

A little while back I wrote a post with a link to Jill McKeever's list in PDF format of 30 Ways to Eat Sweet Potatoes. I just discovered she also did a video and a whole write up of it back in 2014! Now how did I miss that?

Be prepared - Jill is up to her usual shenanigans as she reads off the list, using a different hat, costume or camera filter as she read off each one.

And as always, there are many more recommendations in the comments below the video on YouTube, so be sure to check those out, too.

Soy Curls Noodle Soup

Well, what's Christmas in our house without someone being sick, and this year all 3 of us were. It's this darn bug my son picked up his first week of work in September, and it just gets passed around, over and over again. On Christmas day, it was day 5 of my husband's second go-round, day 1 of my son's 4th bout and day 2 for me and my second battle with it (or is it third?). My husband kept sneezing, my son kept coughing, and I had the sore throat and ear ache. Today I have the runny nose and cough on top of that. Sometimes it hurts to even breathe!

Needless to say, nobody felt like eating, much less cooking, yesterday. Luckily there were plenty of my son's leftovers in the fridge so he helped himself to some of that for his lunch, and he popped a frozen pizza on for his dinner. This isn't the first time he had pizza for Christmas dinner, so it was a good thing to him. He told me weeks ago he wanted pizza, anyway, that's why I had one. My husband insisted on his usual sandwiches for lunch and refused my offer to make him something else. I really needed soup of some kind and found this video by Jill McKeever while roaming the Internet while son fought with his computer and hubby dozed:


This soup is the first one she does in the video, and the written recipe is available for free on her web site in PDF format. You have to go to the store, choose the Winter Soups file, go through the whole paying info page (use a fictitious name and numbers if you want), and then download the file.

Jill's Soy Curls Noodle Soup 

After you make this the first time, you'll want to keep lo mein noodles on hand all the time. For soy curls fans, this soup is perfect for those soy curls crumbs you have waiting in the freezer.

Serves 4 to 6

3 celery stalks, chopped
8 button mushrooms, sliced
1 large carrot, diced
1 1/2 cups dry soy curls, broken into small pieces
8 cups vegetable broth
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons curry
1 teaspoon ground mustard
2 cups fresh spinach
1 package lo mein noodles, broken into fourths

Water sauté celery stalks, mushrooms, and carrot until tender. Add soy curls, vegetable broth, soy sauce, curry, ground mustard, soy sauce. Bring to a boil. Stir in spinach and lo mein noodles Turn off heat; partially cover with lid for 5 minutes. Dinner is on!

Now for my changes. Because I didn't plan on making this soup, especially on a day when all the grocery stores are closed, I didn't have all the listed ingredients, but Jill says in the video even *she* didn't have all the ingredients when she made it and improvised.

Celery and carrots - I always try keep a few containers of mirepoix on hand in the freezer, so even though this soup didn't call for onions, I just tossed the whole frozen lump of veggies in the IPot. My store carries one pint sized containers.

Mushrooms - Tossed in an 8 ounce can of no salt added stems and pieces, complete with the water. This way I didn't have to add any water to saute the veggies.

Veggie broth - in the video she uses only 1 quart of broth, but at the end she plays around and adds some plant milk to make it into a creamy noodle soup. I stuck with the one box.

Soy curls - Even though they're allowed in small quantities on the McDougall program, I keep forgetting I have some in the fridge. When I dug down and crawled to the back of the bottom shelf where I still had a bag and a half of them I saw they were both dated 11/2015. Oops. No Soy Curls for the soup. That's okay. With this throat, they probably would have hurt going down, anyway.

Noodles - Ever since I read Dr. McD advising those with auto-immune diseases, especially RA, to go gluten free, I've been avoiding wheat, so no lo mein noodles for me. Luckily, a few weeks ago we made a trip to Target and I found these rice ramen noodles. So I tossed the "flavor pack", broke up the noodles in the bag, and used these. Not perfect, but better than opening up a pound bag of Tinkyada spaghetti. Our local Stop and Shop is phasing out Tinyada products (NO!!!!!!!!!!) so only has 3 or 4 different shapes, and fettuccine isn't one of them. That would have been perfect.

Spinach - Frozen, of course.

I'm sorry, no picture. I ate all but about a cup of it, and that's packed away in a container in the fridge. Jill's video has better graphics than my soup in a container.

It tasted delicious! The curry was what my sinuses needed and it may have even relieved the ear ache for a while. By the time I got down to that last little bit, my throat was saying "Enough!" and my tummy reluctantly agreed. I'll probably finish it off as a mid-morning snack today. It's not even enough to pour over some rice and call it lunch.

Will I make it again? Definitely! I already tossed some Soy Curls in my cart in Amazon so I can have them on hand again. I just have to remember I have them and use them. As written, this would make a nice, filling soup for dinner for the 2 of us and I look forward to having it again. 

Now to find a nice soothing soup for today's lunch. I had already planned last week to have Mary McDougall's Curried Split Pea Soup (subbing turnips for the taters) for tonight's dinner. Maybe the blended up Quick Black Bean Soup? Oh, wait. I already planned on Potatohead's Black Bean and Sweet Potato Soup for Wednesday. Maybe Jeff Novick's grand-cousin's Pinto Bean Soup but without the rice and veggies. It's hard to find something spur-of-the-moment to make when avoiding gluten and nightshades! In the past, I would have just made some mashed potatoes and be done with it! I'll figure something out between now and noon. Maybe I'll even make this soup again. :)

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Big Potato Meets Big Apple

That giant potato that's been making its way around the country finally landed in my neighborhood.

This would be a nice miracle of nature. Notice the big sign that says "It's REAL"? Well, it's not. It's fiberglass. It's been going around for a few years already.

Still, it's nice to dream, right?

Especially now that I'm testing potatoes again and did NOT have a reaction of any type to Gold potatoes. And I took a few nibbles from a russet the other day and no throat scratchiness. I have a feeling I had just overdone it and my body said "No more! Enough is enough!" after eating spuds for multiple meals a few days in a row. Perhaps if I limit them to once or twice a week things should get back to normal.

So Sad! Spuds No More!

This is me, after realizing I'm developing an allergy or some other adverse reaction to potatoes:

For the past few months we've been eating the super simple McDougall way. On weekends I would make soup for our dinners; Mondays and Thursdays would be rice and veg meals; Tuesdays and Fridays would be potato meals; and Wednesdays were sweet potato meals.

Once in a while I would cook up one of those mesh bags of tiny Gold potatoes and eat them with a veg and either ketchup, gravy, or a nutritional yeast-based cheese sauce for lunch. I even got my son in the habit of eating these delicious little gems.

But the past few weeks I noticed some weird things happening. While eating those tiny taters, or soon after, my throat would get this strange itchy and swollen feeling and my sinuses would get inflamed, and they would stay like that until I woke up the next morning. 

I was also eating russets at dinners once or twice a week but nothing happened after eating those, so I "knew" it wasn't potatoes themselves in general. Ha!

The first time it happened I assumed it was the sneezing spell I had during lunch and thought nothing of it. The second time there was no sneezing but the same thing happened. The third time I only ate 4 leftover tiny taters and by the third one the throat thing started so I stopped eating them. An allergic reaction to something that was sprayed on them, either in the field or the warehouse or stores? Or something in the potatoes themselves?

Now came the experimentation. I tried russets, whites, red, and yellow/Yukon Golds, in both conventional and organic versions. I also varied where I bought them, in case it was something happening in one store and not the others. At first the russets were fine, but then I started to react to those, too. Same thing was happening no matter which variety of potato I ate or where it came from. In fact, near the end of my trials the feeling was starting after the first few bites. 

What turned out to be my last day of experimentation really worried me. I saved testing the russets for last, because I had previously eaten them with no problems, even while reacting to the Yukon Golds. I guess something inside of me changed, because now I was getting the same reaction - the swollen sinuses, itchy and now swelling throat - after just 2 bites. I immediately spit out what was in my mouth.

For the next hour I hung around the house fully dressed, purse packed, ready to go to the ER if things got worse to get a shot of epinephrine if needed. My husband was ready to call 911 if things progressed too fast. Luckily the swelling started to subside a few hours afterwards and he and I started to relax.

So no more potatoes for me. My son already said he would finish up the few we still have in the house, especially now that he got into the habit.

But I don't dare eat another potato.

Hence the sobbing.

Now I don't know whether I should avoid all nightshades vegetables, too, like peppers and tomatoes. We eat the three of those foods at least daily, many times 2 or 3 times a day. I'd really go crazy if I can no longer have tomatoes, too!

Darn this auto-immune disease! I never know what's going to happen next!