Sweet Potato Crunchies

Hello and happy Wednesday. After another busy day, I’m looking forward to a long weekend of fun. But today I started noticing a scratchy throat and I’m determined not to let this pesky little annoyance get in the way! So breakfast and lunch were these monsters:

One loaded with kale, apple, sprouts, carrot, chia seed gel and Sun Warrior protein powder. The other with hemp protein powder, spinach, sunflower shoots, carrot and frozen banana chunks. My quick lunch smoothie left plenty of time during my break to run to the mall to do a little shopping for this weekend’s foodie gift exchange. Smoothies are my way of squashing a possibly oncoming cold. Also continuing with my regular workout schedule since exercise can help prevent and shorten the life of colds.

Still, after enduring my annoying throat all day, I was craving something salty and greasy for dinner. I busted out an ingredient that I haven’t worked with in ages – sweet potato.

I don’t know why, they’re amazing, but I hardly ever buy then. Possibly because they usually take more time to cook than I have. But I was feeling adventurous on my last Whole Foods trip because I’ve been meaning to try something.

Spiralizing it for crunchy, shoe-string fries. But this was no easy task! The plastic “teeth” on my spiralizer could barely get a grip in the tough potato and it required a lot force. Heck, it was practically a workout in itself! And the spiralized results weren’t exactly uniform, or even pretty. But I proceeded to toss them in a bowl with a tbsp. of coconut oil and liberal use of salt.

Then I spread the “noodles” and noodle bits on a lightly greased baking sheet and baked at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.

Well, they came out half crunchy and half mushy. Not the exact results I was looking for, but they tasted amazing with my tempeh salad leftovers from last night.

For a crunchier texture, I probably should have baked the fries on a greased grid in convect mode, I just need to get a grid first. :-P