Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Sweet Potatoey Goodness

Today, I made my children stand in the kitchen and re-learn the words to Santa Claus is Coming to Town as a discipline tactic. Okay, it wasn't actually today because I wrote this post a few days ago and scheduled it to show up now (I so love that feature). But nonetheless, I totally went for exploiting the love/fear of a jolly fat man rather than supervising one more stinkin' time out. Speaking of which...large man dressed as a magical elf that lands a small herd of reindeer on your roof, sneaks into your locked up house while you're sleeping and eats your food...and that's after he spends all year watching your every move, whether you're sleeping or awake. A bit creepy, no?

And while I was threatening small children with nothing but lumps of coal (against my own "never make a threat you're not willing to follow through on" philosophy), I was also holding a baby, washing dishes, and making sweet potato pancakes (more on those later). Because women, and moms especially, totally rock at multi-tasking. And whatever inborn skill you already have gets kicked up to the next level when you're pregnant with a second baby....that first time you puke while also holding back a small child that wants to know, "whatcha doing momma? Will you come play with me? But WHY do I need to go away? I want to stay with yoooouuuuuuuuuuu!" It's all preparation for the morning you find yourself nursing a baby while simultaneously wiping someone else's tiny rear end and wondering why you didn't wait just a little bit longer for the next baby.

But PANCAKES! We're here for the pancakes! We somehow decided it was a pancakes and scrambled eggs for dinner night. I still had a pan of sweet potatoes in the fridge though. We had eaten them two nights in a row and I didn't want to eat more, but I didn't want to waste them either. So I searched for a sweet potato pancake recipe. I found this one on All Recipes and then, of course, tweaked it.

So, first things first, I had already made the sweet potatoes a few days ago: I peeled and diced the sweet potatoes, steamed them, then mashed and added an embarrassing amount of brown sugar (enough to make the color darker), topped with marshmallows and baked until the marshmallows browned. These were the sweet potatoes I was using in the pancakes. I still measured out 3/4 pound, as the recipe calls for.

And then I looked at the recipe and thought someone was smoking crack if they were making pancakes without vanilla, so I added in a healthy teaspoon (or maybe tablespoon...it's one of those ingredients I never measure) of good vanilla (none of that imitation stuff). Then I saw nutmeg on the ingredient list and thought it was equally insane to have nutmeg in such a recipe with no cinnamon or allspice alongside it. So I added both of those in (again, I didn't measure. Just sprinkle some in until it smells good. If you're having a crisis of confidence, go with 1/2 tsp of each). Other than that and using freshly ground nutmeg, I followed the recipe. These pancakes were a HUGE hit here. I put a little butter on top and dusted them with powdered sugar because I inherited a giant sweet tooth, but really, they don't need any topping at all. Definitely don't need syrup. They're sweet enough on their own and taste like Thanksgiving. This will be our standard meal the day after we have sweet potatoes from now on.

4 comments:

Brandy said...

I'm curious how you worked learning a song about Santa as discipline? :P

The Hills said...

"he sees you when you're sleeping he knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sake......" They totally forgot about that whole naughty list/nice list thing since last year and needed a reminder :-p

Dr. White said...

I use the same vanilla! It is THE BEST! Finally found a little general store on our way home to Texas that carries it so I don't have to stress when a bottle is near empty. I'm thinking of making up a huge batch of these for freezer cooking today...hmmm...wonder if frozen pumpkin puree would work in them?

The Hills said...

I Love it! The Farm Patch sells it. I bet pumpkin would work really well. We've made these several times since I wrote this post and I've decided the recipe needs to be doubled for our family, just a head's up!

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