Vegan Birthday Party: Sweet Potatoes

Saturday we celebrated a friend’s birthday, vegan style! This was not a ‘just-put-it-in-the-oven’ type of things.

Not at all.

In fact, I cooked almost all afternoon. It was a tiresome, but quite worthwhile process. Needless to say, I could have made my life easier and prepared some of the dishes ahead of time, but as I was sick for the previous days, Saturday was pretty much spent in the kitchen.

Here is what I made:

• Sun dried tomato stuffed cremini mushrooms
• Sun dried tomato hummus
• Zucchini noodles
• Spicy orange chickpea and shiitake mushroom stir fry
• Baked sweet potato halves
• Lemon pie
• Sweet Potato Brownies

Yes… I think  I might have got this birthday party confused with Christmas as to the amount of food I made.  Everyone was stuffed and satisfied when they left, and we felt ready to get going on Sunday morning, which is great! I find that vegan feasts are really great for this as they do not make you feel heavy and dying the next morning.

The sweet potato halves are really great! This is the easiest way to prepare sweet potatoes, and everyone I have served this to is utterly surprised about how tasty this is. Clearly a win-win situation!

Here is what you need:

• Sweet potatoes (know your public here: I calculated one half per person)
• 1 tbsp coconut oil
• celery salt
• freshly cracked pepper
• salt to taste
• 1 tsp nutritional yeast per potato half
• herbs to taste: rosemary, thyme, oregano, coriander seeds (this is really up to you and what you are serving this with)

Here is what you will need:

1. Preheat your oven to 350F.
2. Thoroughly clean and brush the sweet potatoes. It is better to buy organic, as you will keep the skin.
3. Cut the sweet potatoes half ways. Check what side will sit more comfortably on your baking sheet.
4. Melt the coconut oil and brush it on the cut side of the potatoes. You can use a cooking brush, but a spoon works really well.
5. Sprinkle salt, celery salt, cracked pepper, herbs and nutritional yeast on each potato half.
6. Place the sweet potatoes on a baking sheet, and cook them for 20 minutes. Prick them with a fork and place them back in the oven for another 20 minutes, or until tender.

This is the perfect side dish. It is really easy to make and delicious. Don’t hesitate to eat the skins, they are really good too!

The rest of the recipes are coming! Also get ready for the Christmas series!