30 Meals in 30 Days: Roasted Sweet Potato with Lime & Pepper Mixed Quinoa. Also a rant.

Today's meal was inspired by Gwenyth Paltrow's new cookbook It's All Good. And it is. It's a good cookbook. But considering I have a post coming about the cookbook itself very soon, I won't go into it too much. All I have to say is: simple recipes, delicious tastes.

With that, I bring you roasted sweet potato with lime & pepper mixed quinoa served on homemade corn tortillas. It sounds a little more complicated than it is.

The recipe for Roasted Sweet Potato came from It's All Good, page 152, in case you're wondering. We made a couple of minor changes. There is no photo.

Here's how to make it.

Run the sweet potato under warm water and scrape off excess dirt and yuckies with a serrated knife.

Prick it with a fork multiple times.

Heat oven to 425.

Lie on oven grate with tinfoil on the grate underneath, to catch drips.

Leave for 1.5 hrs. Original recipe says 1 hr but we found the longer the better.

Top with fresh rosemary.

Here's how it looks.

Here's how we're rating it.

Taste value: 10/10. We're suckers for sweet potatoes and we didn't realize how much flavour the skin has! For years we've been eating sweet potato cubed & boiled, or mashed - no skin. We were seriously missing out. Roasted, the sweet potato is sweeter than I'm used to. And that's good.
Simplicity value: 10/10. Ridiculously simple. We also tried this on the BBQ - it needs longer on there. Actually, we've made it 3 times since trying it out for this recipe. New party trick!
Appearance value: 10/10. When you cut it open the sweet potato becomes a very bright orange, and the gooey drips make it look a little gourmet. And it doesn't take the work gourmet does.
Entertainment value: 8/10. Sweet potato is not everyone's cup of tea but like with every recipe, you need to know the tastebuds of your guest.
Coolness value: 10/10. We keep trying these recipes and ask why we'd never thought of it before. This is one of those recipes.

We'd tried quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) earlier in our marriage and it came out crunchy and bitter. So we gave up on it. I now know that I wasn't preparing it properly: quinoa must be rinsed prior to eating because its natural coating tastes bitter, and it needs a little more than the "recommended" time to cook & soak the water because... well I don't know why. It's just one of those mysteries of the universe.

How do you know quinoa is ready to eat? It gets little spirals forming in it. No spirals, no eat. Thanks, nature, for the tip! (Also it should be soft.)

Quinoa is great because it's cheap in Canada. I'm all for cheap. It's also a gluten-free psuedo-seed which is high in protein, fibre and iron. So that's all good.

But it's cheap in Canada, so to avoid sounding like some health-nut, which I'm really not (tonight I ate McDonald's fries for dinner; suck on that, 30 Meals in 30 Days)... ...let's focus on the price of it. Cheap.

(Although, full disclosure, quinoa is apparently "socially destructive"and consuming it makes you a villain by "driving poverty" to Bolivia. Previously consumed by poor Andean farmers, the now in-vogue seed is too expensive (even though I was just bragging about how cheap it is) for those who grow it, to actually eat it. Those who farm the product can make more money by selling it internationally.

[Getting on the soap box.]
However if I can stand on my soap box for a second: let's be real, this is a pretty common phenomena in world history. Take a look at the Silk Road for a ridiculously broad example. What we have today is a very modernized version of the Silk Road - merchants and suppliers trade commodities that local communities can't produce themselves, the merchants take the commodities home and sell for more than they purchased. Did merchants on the Silk Road buy their own silk, spices or porcelain? Probably not. It's likely they could not afford the own product they produced. This is just life.

But we're better than that.

As modern consumers, we should be asking ourselves how we can empower farmers worldwide to supply products to their own community at reasonable prices, while meeting the demand of international or out-of-town consumers like ourselves. That's instead of swearing off quinoa in an effort to save the world.

Personally, I think we should pay more for a product, in first-world Canada / US / United Kingdom, so we can subsidize the local farmer's expense in supplying to their lesser-paying community and help developing countries to provide healthful and local products to their own citizens.

We can afford it, can't we?

All we need is a good federal government and a group of voters who give a shit about the world around them. That exists, right?

Anyone want to help me lobby?
Anyone?
Nobody?
Free meal involved.
No?
Okay.

Thanks for letting me get my 2nd-year-University-style-first-draft-paper into the universe.

[Getting off the soap box.]

So let's take a look at this meal then, yeah?

This quinoa recipe isn't actually a recipe I found... anywhere. Isn't that great?! It was inspired! 

You guys, I made up a recipe all by myself!
This is a first.

"Inspired" by the Roasted Tomato & Chipotle Salsa recipe listed on page 282 of It's All Good, I realized that all you need is a little onion, olive oil, pepper, cilantro, lemon juice and garlic to make something that tastes good.

So that's what I did.

Here's how to make it.

Cook 1 cup quinoa following these instructions

Combine...
1/4 yellow bell pepper
1/4 red bell pepper
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 onion, chopped

Fry above ingredients with 1 tbsp olive oil

Chop up green onion
Chop up fresh cilantro

Sprinkle over quinoa

Squeeze half a lime over quinoa

Add salsa mix (above)

Serve

WHAT.

Here's how it looks.

See the spirals in the quinoa? That's how you know it's done cooking.

Here's how we're rating it.
Taste value: 7/10. It's not super sweet or super spicy or super anything, it's just a solid salsa-style mix. Nice & summery.
Simplicity value: 8/10. It's a little time consuming what with all the chopping and frying but it's not difficult by any stretch of the imagination.
Appearance value: 10/10. Bright colours - green, yellow & red.
Entertainment value: 8/10 - even when rinsed, quinoa does have a distinct bittery taste which not everyone can agree on... but it's a side salad, served hot or cold, so it doesn't need to please the town.
Coolness value: 10/10 because I feel really proud to have made up this recipe myself, even if it is incredibly basic. I feel like I've had a confidence boost!

And here's the meal together.

We served the meal on homemade corn tortillas with a little salsa & sour cream and suddenly it was Mexican. Nice!