Meg Goes Nom Nom

Well hello! If you happened to catch my first ever (sorta-) Video Blog yesterday, then you caught a sneak peek of today’s dinner.

Using Alton Brown’s recipe, I made Chipotle Smashed Sweet Potatoes. I made these this weekend, and merely had to reheat them for tonight’s weeknight dinner. And OMG! – these were incredible. I highly recommend this recipe, which involves peeling, cubing, steaming, and mashing sweet potatoes with a little butter, salt, chopped chipotle, and spoonful of the adobo sauce. Chipotles are smoked jalapenos, and since only once is used, only a very subtle heat is added to the dish. The smoky Chipotles and mildly sweet Adobo Sauce are ingenious accompaniments to sweet potatoes. Please, please, please, do NOT add sugar to your sweet potatoes if you use this recipe. The sweet potatoes shine on their own – no sweetener needed. I HIGHLY recommend this recipe; these were the best sweet potatoes I’ve ever had.

My second veggie side was also a WINNER! I started out with a leek. Leeks are admittedly a bit intimidating. But there’s no reason to be scared. To handle and prepare these boys, you start by chopping off the root end and the green leafy portion as seen below. The white/pale green “stem” portion is the usable portion, and you should give it a slice down the middle, so that you can thoroughly rinse out all the layers, where dirt and grit may will be lurking. Then just give it a nice thin chop, and all the layers will separate, giving you nice thin slices. You can also substitute onion for leeks, but leeks have a mellower flavor which is sometimes desired, such as in this dish, in which it will be paired with mild spinach.

Creamed Spinach – recipe from Cooking Light. Ingredients:

So easy! Saute leeks and garlic, add thawed and drained frozen spinach. Whisk flour into milk, and add to saute pan. Stir in cream cheese! Easy, inexpensive, low-cal, healthy 5-minute side dish! Loved it!

I also baked two bone-in chicken breasts at 400 F. After exactly one hour I checked on them, and they were perfect (!!!) – right at 165 degrees F (which presumably will “carry-over” to 170 F after a few minutes of resting, according to the pros). These were simply seasoned generously with salt and pepper, and I basted them in the drippings a couple of times while they were baking.

I can’t get over how much I loved dinner tonight! 🙂 So healthy, easy, and delicious. A square meal.

I filmed a short video tonight, on my camera, so I’d have a little footage to toy with in my newly discovered video editing software. So heads up! – MegGoesNomNom’s 2nd VLOG may soon be released. 😉

♪♫ Currently listening to: Sing for Absolution – Muse.