Kale, Chorizo, Sweet Potato Salad

The kale/chorizo/sweet potato combo was first inspired by the Kale Chorizo Soup http://carvedblock.blogspot.com/2013/06/kale-chorizo-soup.html, but my friend Ross and I have been experimenting with this format for quite some time. This round, I heated a couple onions and some garlic in about half a stick of butter for five minutes, then added water and a couple pounds of thinly-chopped sweet potatoes. I covered this and cooked it for about twenty minutes. In another pan, I mixed a pound of sliced chorizos with about a pound of chopped kale and some green peppers and cooked it for about fifteen to twenty minutes. Once the potatoes were soft, I mixed everything together in a large bowl, added two "logs" of goat cheese (probably about 8 oz. each?) and stirred it all together. It's pretty hard to go wrong using the kale+meat+sweet potato+cheese combination.

Egg Bake

Inspired by a Bon Appetit magazine recipe, I decided to make an egg bake for a weekend up at the cabin. I lined the bottom of the pan with chorizo cut in small disks (on sale at Cub $3/lb), and then mixed together a pound of chopped spinach, a pound of chopped kale, a dozen eggs, a can of coconut cream, about ten chopped scallions, salt, pepper, and rosemary and poured this mixture on top of the chorizo. I sprinkled on one container of romano cheese from Aldi ($2) and some parmesan and cooked it for about an hour. Hooey! The flavor from the chorizo permeated the entire dish, creating the greatest breakfast of all time.

Sweet Potato Cheesecake

I'm not going to pretend this is good for you in any way, but there is no added sugar so it could be worse. For the crust, I beat an egg with a little less than a cup of almond flour and some butter, spread this on the bottom of a springform pan, and cooked it in the oven for about 10 minutes. For the filling, I mixed around 1.5 lbs. of cooked and mashed sweet potatoes with an 8 oz. package of cream cheese, a 16 oz. container of Ricotta cheese, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and stevia. After cooking it in the oven for an hour and a half or so I added chopped pecans to the top and then refrigerated it. It turned out pretty tasty with some good sweet potato flavor, but I probably wouldn't make it again. Not a huge fan of "baking."