Sweet potato peanut noodles

I love love love peanut noodles, sesame noodles, and basically any noodle with a creamy, nutty, salty sauce, as does my child. He likes to pretend he can use chop sticks (he's actually pretty good, considering) and make a huge mess. It's adorable.

I swapped out the soba or lo mein noodles that are the usual base for this dish and used swoodles instead and they're fantastic. A little bit crunchy and just a tiny bit sweet to balance out the salty sauce. Yum. The toddler agrees.

I like to saute the noodles briefly with a little olive oil and a hot pan. Really, you just need a few minutes to take away the rawness of the sweet potatoes. I don't look for any color, just a slight opaqueness. You aren't really cooking the noodles, just making them not raw, if that makes any sense. I'm guessing you could eat them totally raw and it would be fine, I just haven't done it. I also feel like swoodles beat zoodles in a "could this pass for pasta" contest, hands down. If you don't have a spiralizer, you could just use a vegetable peeler to make long, thin noodles. 

I've tried many different recipes and have winged it many times in making peanut noodles, but I always come back to Smitten's recipe. It's a little lighter than your typical peanut sauce because Deb swaps in some tahini for peanut butter. I always want to add tahini to this dish, but never seem to get the right balance when adapting other recipes. I add one more Tbsp of peanut butter and use an even 4 Tbsp of soy sauce because I really like peanut butter and salt. I also use half of the sugar because the sweet potato noodles are already sweet, but other than that, I use the recipe as written. I love it.

This base is also perfect with just some crisp cucumbers on top, but you could also add edamame, leftover protein, dried seaweed, toasted sesame seeds, and ANY other raw, steamed, or roasted veggies. You could kind of use this as a base for a noodle bowl.

Sweet potato peanut noodles

1 extra large sweet potato (about 1 lb), peeled and spiralized
1 Tbsp avocado or other neutral oil
2 Tbsp toasted sesame oil
2 Tbsp tahini
2 Tbsp peanut butter
4 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
½ Tbsp brown sugar
1-inch piece of peeled fresh ginger
1 medium garlic clove

Heat 1 tbsp of avocado or other neutral oil in a pan over medium flame. Add the sweet potato noodles and sauté for 5 minutes until the potatoes are slightly opaque. Flip the noodles and cook for about 5 minutes more. Let cool.

In a food processor or blender, combine all the ingredients from sesame oil to the garlic and blend until smooth.

Toss the noodles with the sauce and serve. Also, this dish lasted for quite some time in the fridge and maintained its crunch and freshness for at least 1 week.

Yield: about 4 servings

Blueberry and beet popsicles

Whooooeeeey, what a week. I completely missed popsicle week last week, interestingly, because I was busy making popsicles for my very sick child. Have any of you dealt with Coxsackie? I had never heard of it before having children, but apparently it's a virus that's been around forever and we've all had it.

Also, it's terrible. Thanks to a really sore throat and a high fever, M basically ate nothing for two days, so we tried lots of different frozen treats. Aside from these blueberry and beet-sicles, we made carrot, apple, and coconut treats using carrot juice, apple juice, and coconut milk; Orange coconut creamsicles using orange juice and coconut milk; and a roasted mango concoction that I'm still working on. I'll be honest, the ones with vegetables didn't go over as well while M was sick, but when he's healthy, he gobbles them up. 

Can I confess something? I don't really like beets. I also HATE cooking them myself, though everyone claims that it's sooooo easy. Whelp, I bought the beets in this photo because they were cheap and pretty at the farmer's market, but I fully used the organic pre-cooked ones you can buy at the grocery store that are vacuum sealed in plastic. I refuse to ruin my cutting board for a vegetable I don't even like.

However, I DO like beets when they're mixed with other things; chocolate, goat cheese, blueberries, etc.

This puree is great on its own or when mixed with yogurt, cooked grains, or pureed proteins for more advanced eaters. I personally love eating these as popsicles and would one day like to spike them with some sort of alcohol. For M, I mixed the blueberry/beet puree with a yogurt, almond butter, and honey combo that cut the fruit and veggies with something a little creamier. I also encourage you to make popsicles using just the yogurt mixture because they. are. great. Even my sick,-as-a-dog child ate the frozen yogurt. 

A couple of notes: If you have the temerity to cook the beets yourself, here's how. Otherwise, do what I do and use the precooked ones. Be sure to roast the blueberries (don't skip this step!) because raw ones in frozen treats don't have a strong flavor. Does anyone else notice that frozen raw fruit tastes blander? Anyway, I also recommend eating these only while wearing dark colors and/or when you can immediately dunk your child in water to clean up because they're a little messy. But isn't that half the fun of a popsicle?

Beet and blueberry puree and popsicles  

For the puree:
1.5 cups fresh blueberries (about 1 pint, minus whatever is filched by your toddler)
¾ cup chopped beets (about 3 very small)
¼ tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375. Spread the blueberries on a foil- or parchment-covered baking sheet and roast for 10 minutes, until the berries are soft and fragrant, but haven't burst. Place the blueberries and beets in the blender, add the cinnamon, and puree until you've reached your desired consistency. 

Yield: 1.5 cups or 12 oz of puree

For the pops:
1 cup full fat plain yogurt
2 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp almond butter (preferably salted)

Fill the popsicle molds 1/2 way with the blueberry and beet mixture and freeze for at least 30 minutes or until the mixture begins to set. Fill the rest of the molds with the yogurt mixture and freeze solid, at least 5-6 hours.

Yield: 4 large ice pops

Cheers!

Falafel waffles

Falafel waffles, guys. They're really really good. Also, hearing a 2 year old say "Falafel waffle" is hysterical. M studies at the Leslie Knope Institute of Waffle Appreciation, so I try to waffle things whenever possible. These are particularly successful. I usually feel pretty 'meh' toward baked falafel because they tend to be, in my opinion, mealy, dry, and little hard to swallow. Appetizing, eh? No so with these guys! I adapted a terrific recipe from Epicurious but added more spices, tahini to help bind and moisten the batter, and chunks of haloumi cheese.

Let's talk about haloumi. I love this cheese so so much. BUT, I have to add the caveat that it's rubbery when cold. Like, feels terrible on your teeth and makes a horrible sound when chewed, rubbery. But, once heated, this cheese is divine. Melted, roasted, grilled, etc, it's great. Grilled is my favorite because it becomes more oozy and gooey, but doesn't seem to fully melt. Anyway, this cheese is salty and a little briny, but very mild and in the waffles creates pockets of salty goodness.

The batter here is not your typical waffle batter and when I first made these, I thought for sure that they'd be a flop. Once combined, these ingredients make sort of a grainy, sandy, thick-ish mixture that bakes into a totally normal waffle. A couple more notes: I only use dried chickpeas that I've soaked overnight in these. I think that the canned ones fall apart too easily. I also used garbanzo flour to make these gluten-free, but you can use any type of flour you have on hand. Be sure to spray your waffle maker with some olive oil spray between each batch as these guys can stick.

Falafel Waffles

Roughly adapted from Cookie + Kate

2 cups chick peas
1.5 Tbsp (just grab a handful) fresh cilantro
1.5 Tbsp (ditto above) fresh parsley
½ large onion
1 tsp salt
4 cloves garlic
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp paprika
½ tsp coriander
2 Tbsp tahini
6 Tbsp garbanzo flour
8 oz haloumi cheese (1 medium-sized block)

Place all of the ingredients up to the cheese into a food processor and pulse until well combined and looking like medium grains of sand. Chunk up the cheese with your hands and mix into the falafel batter. Form into palm-sized balls (about 1/3 cup each) and cook in a well-greased waffle maker according to the appliance’s directions.

Yield: 12 small waffles