What is for dinner? Sweet Potato and Black Bean Burritos

This recipe is from my new cookbook that I got from my friend Casey for my birthday. All 5 of my kids ate it and liked it. One of them didn't eat much, but she says she liked it. It says that it takes 35 min to make and 30 min to bake, but I left out the baking part and it was a really fast meal with 1 pot, 1 pan, and a cutting board to clean up.

5 Cups peeled cubed sweet potatoes (this ended up being only 2 big ones)

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons canola oil

3 1/2 cups diced onions (I did one large which was 2 cups)

4 large garlic cloves, minced or pressed

1 Tablespoon minced fresh green chile (I left this out since I didn't have any)

4 teaspoons cumin

4 teaspoons coriander

4 1/5 Cups cooked black beans (three 15 ounce cans, drained)

2/3 Cup lightly packed cilantro leaves

2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon salt

8 eight inch flour tortillas

Fresh Salsa

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (or not)

Place the sweet potatoes in a medium saucepan with the salt and water to cover. Cover and bring to a boil, then simmer until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.

While the sweet potatoes are cooking, warm the oil in a medium skillet or saucepan and add the onions, garlic and chile. Cover and cook on medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the onions are tender, about 7 minutes. Add the cumin and coriander and cook for 2 minutes longer, stirring frequently. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Ina food processor (I used my vitamix on a low setting), combine the black beans, cilantro, lemon juice, salt and cooked sweet potatoes and puree until smooth. Transfer the sweet potato mixture to a large mixing bowl and mix in the cooked onions and spices (I did this my pan that I cooked the onions in).

Option #1 Lightly oil a large baking dish. Spoon about 2/3 to 3/4 cup of the filling in the center of each tortilla, roll it up, and place it, seam side down, in the baking dish. Cover tightly with foil and bake for about 30 minutes, until piping hot. Serve topped with salsa.

Option #2 Spoon about 2/3 to 3/4 cup of the filling in the center of each tortilla, roll it up, and place it, seam side down, on a microwavable plate. Put a bunch of shredded cheese on top and microwave for 1 minute, or until cheese is melted.

Top with fresh salsa

Each serving has 8 grams of fiber, 20 grams of protein, and about 550 calories.

Clif Kid Organic Twisted Fruit on sale on Amazon

This is a really good deal on something my kids really love. Clif Kids Organic Twisted Fruit variety pack. Kinda like fruit leathers, but even better! Ends up being .56 cents a piece when you do the subscribe and save. If you have never tried the subscribe and save on Amazon, it is really easy. You can cancel anytime. I even recently signed up for diapers and then canceled it the next day (potty training), and it was as easy as a click of a button. I blogged about these fruit twists almost 2 years ago. Click here to see that blog post.

Jamie Oliver is at it again!

Last night Jamie Oliver's food revulution was on again with an all new season. I haven't finished the show, but here are some highlights of the night.

• Jamie has 4 kids and has moved to LA with his family. I don't know how permanent this is, but I loved seeing him with his kids. Too cute!
• Ground beef can have up to 15% of what they call "pig slime" in it. It isn't pig, but it is worse. They take all the parts of the cow that are not edible, put it through a centrifuge to separate out the little pieces of meat, and then rinse the meat with a mixture of ammonia and water to kill all the bacteria since it comes from the stomach of the cow and such. Then they "rinse" it and grind it up. The real shocker is that they don't have to put ammonia on the ingredient list because it is part of the "processing of the the meat"!!!!!!!! Yes, this is in the school lunch hamburgers, and no, it isn't on the list of ingredients.
• LA has ban Jamie from their entire school district!
• LA has a central kitchen where the food is made and then it is shipped around to the different schools. Nothing is fresh and most of it is heated up in plastic bags (think BPA)

It is so fascinating to watch! Hope you will tune in to ABC Tuesday nights 7/8 central. Click here for more info on the show

BPA FREE

My sister in law Katy sent me this article about Toxins in our diet from one of my favorite shows, the biggest loser. Julian Michael's says we should avoid certain plastics that have BPA in them.

"Bisphenol A (BPA): BPAs are chemical compounds that are added to plastics to make them more durable; they're most commonly found in the linings of food containers, beverage cans, some baby bottles, and drinking bottles, and they can leach out into foods and liquids. Harmful side effects from consuming them can include increased risk of breast and prostate cancers, infertility, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and insulin resistance (which, in turn, can lead to type 2 diabetes). To be safe, store foods in glass containers, drink from stainless steel water bottles, and do your best to avoid canned foods."

The biggest no no is to warm up food in plastic with BPA in it. If you still have plastic tuperware that you are using to store your leftovers in, then consider getting a set of glass storage containers. You can find a nice set from Costco for only $15.

Update! My sister Julie went and bought a set yesterday and it was $30, but sometimes they have a coupon for $5 off. See her comments below. Still worth it!

Annie's Mac and Cheese on sale this week at Smith's!

If you live around a Smith's food and Drug, then you need to know about the great sale they have this week. About 4 different varieties of the Annie's Mac and cheese are only .49 cents each when you buy 10! They are usually $1.99 each, but they are on sale for .99 cents each and then when you buy 10 of them you get $5 off when you check out.

I have been feeding my kids annies for sometime now because they don't have any food coloring or hydrogenated fats in them. They also are made with organic pasta. This is really the best deal I have found on them.

Sale goes through Tuesday March 29th, 2011!

UPDATE on McDonald's Hamburgers . . . Good Science vs. Bad Science

So do you remember that post I did about the McDonalds hamburger that was almost a year old and still looked the same? Well my daughter Amanda needed a science fair project, so I gave her that idea, and she was really excited about it.

The main difference between her experiment and the McDonald's hamburger that stayed the same is that she used a control . . . a homemade hamburger! If you don't have a control, then it is all hype and NOT GOOD SCIENCE!

This is what she did . . . Took a plain McDonald's 1/4 pounder hamburger, and put it in a zip lock bag with a couple of slits in it (the thought of a hamburger rotting in the open grossed me out). Then she took and then a homemade 1/4 pound patty on a homemade hamburger bun and put that in a gallon zip lock bag with a couple slits in it. She then let them sit on top of our cupboards for 6 weeks and took pictures each week to see the change. I wrote the date on the bags with a permanent marker so we knew when each picture was taken.

Results:

After about 2 weeks, mold appeared on both hamburgers. Black mold on the homemade hamburger, and green and white mold on the McDonald's hamburger. More mold was on the homemade hamburger.

Conclusion:

Mold needs moister to grow, so by putting the hamburgers in ziplock bags, there was enough moister to allow the mold to grow.

When we were trying to figure out why our McD's burger got mold, but this other one did not, we came across this great website that took about 9 different hamburgers and put them under different environments. Some where kept in a container, and some in the open air. They came to the conclusion that the McDonald's hamburger's moister evaporated so quickly, that the mold didn't have a chance to grow. Click here to see the blog post.

We also found out that a McD's bun has a ton of preservatives in it. That is probably why the black mold (one of the most common molds) didn't grow on the McDonald's burger.

Here is the ingredients list of the bun:

Enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, enzymes), water, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, yeast,soybean oil and/or partially hydrogenated soybean oil, contains 2% or less of the following: salt, calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, wheat gluten, ammonium sulfate, ammonium chloride, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, datem, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, mono- and diglycerides, ethoxylated monoglycerides, monocalcium phosphate, enzymes, guar gum, calcium peroxide, soy flour), calcium propionate and sodium propionate (preservatives), soy lecithin.

I explained to Amanda that mold spores are literally everywhere! But, if they don't have the right environment (moister, heat, and sometime the right light, or darkness), then the mold will not grow. I remember learning about this in a biology class I had in college, and it grossed me out for weeks. They showed us a video of mold spores in slow motion.

Such a fun experiment. She won first prize too! Great science Amanda!

Simply Fruit

We love jam in my family. We go through about 1 jar a week. We eat lots of PB&J sandwiches, have toast in the morning, and jam on a piece of bread is a great snack. It is really hard to find jam with no High-Fructose Corn Syrup in it (HFCS).

It is really fast to look on the back of the jar on the ingredients list to see if your jar has HFCS in it. Jam really only has 3 ingredients, 1. fruit, 2. sugar, 3. pectin.

My favorite jam is the simply fruit brand by smuckers. This kind is sweetened with fruit juice instead of sugar. Walmart has the best price on this jam. I always stock up when I go there.

If it says "organic" on it, then it shouldn't have HFCS in it.

Costco has organic strawberry jam, and they have another kind of berry jam that is free from HFCS.

So if you are looking for a jam that is free of HFCS, look for simply fruit at Walmart, shop at Costco, or buy organic!

Thanks James for being my model for the Simply Fruit Jam!