Sweet Potato Toast with Hummus

I have been NOT taking care of my health and hit another one of those “I have to do this!” marks.  So… here we go again.  I know full well that aside from craving fat, sugar, and salt… my biggest problem areas are in not planning.

You see, when I have a day filled to the brim with projects that must get done, it’s hard for me to think about what is involved in healthy eating… because usually for me it would be: do dishes, go grocery shopping, do food prep, then cook.  That’s just WAY too much work when I can instead just slather some peanut butter and honey on top of a banana or toast and be done with a “meal” in 10 minutes flat, from creating to eating.

Cleaning, prepping, and cooking can take hours if not all day.  Been there, done that.  So how do I resolve this?  A plan.  I have to have a plan and I have to plan ahead.

Step 1: Meal plan. Pick 2 or 3 basic meals that I can mix and match for 3-4 days.

Step 2: Use Instacart to do my grocery shopping for me.  Right there I save at least 2 hours of time.

Step 3: Keep the kitchen clean.  Instead of letting the dishes pile up, do them at least twice a day.

Step 4: Prep.  Do all the prep and/or cooking ahead of time.  That should leave me with a fridge/pantry full of healthy options for at least four days.

For my first “meal plan” thoughts, I selected:

• Sweet potato toast
• Smoothies
• Moroccan shepherd’s pie
• Zucchini bread
• Vegan chopped salad
• Curried chickpea salad
• Quinoa kale bowl

That is WAY too much for a couple days.  I have learned the expensive way to keep it narrow and simple.  Buying groceries you can’t get to before they go bad is a sad waste.

So I narrowed it down to the first three items.  The salads will be better for in a few days anyway because I’ll be away at a workshop so having food that travels easily will be good.

I'd heard of “sweet potato toast” before but the idea didn’t appeal to me enough to try it before.  But since actual bread makes me feel bloated and lethargic, I decided to give it a go.  Because the thing about toast is, it’s a great carrier vehicle.  Having a spoon of peanut butter and jelly, for example, doesn’t hold a candle to spreading peanut butter and jelly on warm toast. 

I had been using those really thin rice crackers as carriers lately, but I feel like doing something different AND I imagine sweet potato is more nutritious than rice crackers.

So I started with Google.  This is the page I went to and it looked good to me so I went nowhere else.

I don’t have a toaster and I don’t have a regular oven, so I did my cooking in a toaster oven.  I sliced the sweet potato using my mandolin (which I love).  Side note: your slices can only be as wide as your mandolin so if you have a potato that is wider than the channel, you’ll have to trim it.

I’m kind of “sweeted out” because I’d been having bananas and peanut butter for a couple days, so I made sure to include some hummus with my Instacart order.  In a perfect world, I would have made my own hummus, but I just wasn’t in the right head space (or time space) for that.  [Click here for my hummus recipe, though, if you want homemade.]

I went with “option 2” for her choice of toppings.  OMG, it was heavenly. 

I ended up toasting the thin slices at 350 for 30 minutes.  For the second batch, I was trying to speed things up so I did 400 degrees, but just ended up burning things.

It was hard for me to judge when they were done because prior to burning they’re still kind of soft in the center.  My brain was thinking “toast” so I thought the entire slice was supposed to be stiff and crunchy.  Apparently, not so.

I spread a bit of hummus on each slice, ground some fresh black pepper on top, added sliced scallions, and sprinkled with toasted pine nuts.  Don’t skip any of those steps… this was really good.  I did skip the “add salt” part because the hummus, being commercially made, had plenty of salt already.

If you try this recipe, come back and post in the comments. I'd love to hear from you!

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