Meatless Saturday?

Lately I have been trying to step it up with my healthy eating habits.  Not only do I want to eat more veggies, eat less processed foods, eat more whole foods, and drink more water, I want to eat more of a plant based diet.  This is the perfect time of year to do it since being catholic I can't eat meat on Fridays anyway, so why not try to not eat meat other days too?!  It's not that easy.  Maybe it's a mental thing but in the past, on days I don't eat meat I am never full.  It just seems like I am starving the entire day!  So lately I have been playing around with different meat free recipes and I think I have come up with a keeper!  I was on Pinterest again (obsession!)  and I saw and pinned several recipes for stuffed sweet potatoes.  Since I am in love with sweet potatoes right now I was excited to put my own spin on them.  Whenever I make any recipe I just can't leave it alone.  I always end up changing something.  I heard from one of the many cooks I watch on TV that you should follow a recipe exactly the first time you make it so you know what it's supposed to taste like.  Then you can change it how you want to the next time.  It sounds like a good idea, but I just can't do that.

So for this no recipe recipe, I say that because I don't really measure when I'm cooking (sorry), I started by preheating my oven to 375 degrees.  Wash the sweet potatoes, put them on a sheet tray, and pop them in the oven for 45 min-an hour until cooked through.

While the potatoes are cooking, make the filling.  For the filling I diced a med-large sweet onion, a red bell pepper, and 3 cloves of garlic put them in my trusty cast iron skillet with a very little oil, maybe a teaspoon, and sauted them until tender.

Once the peppers and onions softened I added my selection of spices for this mix (silly me, I forgot to add the smoked paprika in that picture).  I of course did not measure.  I added about 1/2 teaspoon of the cumin and chipotle powder, between 1/2 and a whole teaspoon of the coriander, and a full teaspoon of the ancho chili powder and smoked paprika.  Let the spices get warm and toasty in the pan.  Then I added about a cup of frozen corn, a can of black beans that I drained and rinsed, almost a whole can of diced fire roasted tomatoes, and about a 1/2 head of kale roughly chopped.

Let that saute for 5-10 minutes or until the kale wilts.  While that sautes the potatoes should have come out of the oven and cooled a bit.  Just slice them in half, scoop out the middle, and put it into a bowl to wait for the rest of the filling.

Once the veggies are nice and tender and everything is happy in the skillet,  give it a hit of lime juice, take it off the heat and put it in the bowl with the sweet potatoes.  I did not end up using all of my veggie mixture, I just popped it in it's own container for veggie burritos later in the week.  Mix it all together and get to stuffing!

You will probably have too much filling for the potato halves, but I just over stuffed mine.  The more the better right?!  They taste delicious, they have almost no fat, very little salt and they have all stuff that's good for you!

Enjoy and happy cooking!  <3