Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Veggie Potpie Stew and Sweet Potato Drop Biscuits

Veggie Potpie Stew and Sweet Potato Drop Biscuits from Appetite for Reduction
I used half a red onion that we had in the refrigerator. One of the benefits of using red onions for everything is they tend to be more potent and the ones we've been buying are huge so I can use half for one recipe and have some leftover for the next meal. They are also higher in antioxidants than yellow and white onions. I used sweet potatoes for the stew instead of white potatoes and I added some corn. The stew was wonderful and I'd love to make it again, but my yellow split peas must have been old because they took forever to cook. I intentionally started the stew early so it would cook longer than the thirty minutes specified in the recipe, but the split peas were still a tad firm. Do I have to compost the rest of my yellow split peas or is there something I can do to make them more edible? I rinsed them before cooking, what if I soaked them? Anyway, it is a another great recipe from Appetite for Reduction and reminds me of the Amy's pot pie filling which I think anyone would eat with spoon...and now you can. I might try the stew with tempeh sometime or red lentils since my yellow split peas seem to be a dud. The biscuits? How can one go wrong with drop biscuits? They are so simple and with a cup of sweet potatoes they are super moist and nutritious. There is a definite nutmeg flavor so cut the nutmeg if you aren't a fan. Parker had two servings of the stew, but gave his biscuits to his siblings (which they more than willingly took off his hands). The little ones finished off the biscuits for breakfast and asked me to make more. I used four sweet potatoes/yams (I had a mixture of both in our root product bin) for this meal. We are planning our garden for this spring and if any locals want to go in on some sweet potato plants, let me know. They will be around $.50/plant and they are shipped to us at our planting time (May, I believe).

Dema-ism: We love Berkeley Breathed (veg/pro-AR artist) and my sister has given a couple of his books to the kids over the years. One of Dema and Josie's favorites is Mars Needs Moms. We found the movie based on the book was streaming through Nexflix so I decided to watch it last night with the little ones, while Rob and Parker had some time together. At first Dema said the book was much better and he was disappointed. Then as it got to the part where the mom takes off her helmet and gives it to her son so he could breathe on Mars and she would surely parish, I noticed that Dema (7) was wiping away tears. Now the kids are very empathetic (as children naturally are) and they get upset, scared, sad, etc. over various topics in movies and books. I don't remember them crying during a movie before. It was so obvious how deeply that scene affected Dema and so sweet. I was glad he felt comfortable crying and didn't feel the need to hide it, but I wouldn't have noticed at all if we hadn't been snuggling all together. He stated at the end that he "guessed" the movie was pretty good too even if it was different than the book. How I love that intense young man.

1 comment:

Karen said...

Aw! I love that book. And those kids.