Nooch Encrusted Sweet Potato Tacos with Black Beans, Kale, and Avocado

Standard

Once you start to eat nooch (nutritional yeast) you start to crave it like plants crave the sun. It starts small, maybe sprinkling some on your popcorn or adding it to your tofu scramble, and then the next thing you know, you are adding it to everything you eat. Somehow, I hadn’t tried it with roasted potatoes until I came across a post by Kristy Turner on Keepin’ it Kind for a Cheesy Sweet Potato & Chickpea Bowl with Lemon Tahini Sauce. I made the bowl and I loved it, but then I ended up making the sweet potatoes three more times that week! Here I paired them with black beans and kale for a perfect easy delicious weeknight taco.

Nooch Encrusted Sweet Potatoes
1 giant or 2 normal sweet potatoes
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast

Preheat the oven to 425 and prepare a baking sheet with parchment or silpat. Peel and cube the sweet potatoes and put them in a pile on the baking sheet. Sprinkle on the oil and mix with your hands until the potatoes are mostly coated. Sprinkle the potatoes with the spices, salt, and 2 tablespoons of the nutritional yeast. Mix again with your hands and then sprinkle on the final tablespoon nooch and spread the potatoes out so they aren’t touching. Bake in the preheated oven about 10 minutes and then flip and bake another 10 minutes or until potatoes are softened and able to be pierced with a fork. Meanwhile, make the beans and get the garnishes ready.

Beans and Greens
1 teaspoon of cooking oil
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
Afew handfuls of greens like spinach, kale, or chard
1/4 cup white wine or broth.

Heat a cast iron skillet over high heat and add cooking oil. Swish it around and add the onions. Let them brown, turning every now and then, for about 5 minutes. Add the beans, greens, and white wine and stir until greens are wilted. Serve immediately.

For the Tacos
Corn or flour tortillas, heated
Asmall avocado, sliced
2 teaspoons of pepitas,
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped (optional)
Juice from a small lime
2 teaspoons creamy chipotle sauce from the Taco Cleanse book or other hot sauce (optional)

Place a bit of the sweet potatoes on the tortilla followed by the beans, add the garnishes above or use whatever garnishes your body is calling for. Enjoy!

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Let Tacos Be Thy Medicine.

Standard

hot sauce

‘Let tacos be thy medicine and medicine be thy tacos.’

– Hipptacorates

I started coming down with a cold this past winter. Something had been going around for weeks at work, and I was the last one to get it. Sneezing, runny nose, cough, head congestion… it came on like a ton of bricks. But then I remembered the Hipptacocratic Oath, “First, eat a taco.”

And so I did. The first taco didn’t have much flavor, or I couldn’t taste it very well, due to my illness. I drank plenty of fluids (margaritas), and then tried another taco. I found it much more appetizing. I could taste the healing powers of that taco, and found my levels beginning to increase exponentially. Suddenly my cold symptoms began to disappear. I could breathe normally again.

Now, I’m not saying that eating tacos is a miracle cure for every ailment… but if you find yourself coming down with an illness, it certainly couldn’t hurt to try it.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

One Taco You Don’t Want… The Bicycle Taco.

Standard

 

Wheel Taco

Credit: http://blog.bikeridr.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/WheelTaco.jpg

If you’ve ever crashed your bicycle and bent your front wheel so badly that it can’t be ridden, you know about the bicycle “taco”. This is such a frustrating experience, and clearly a negative thing, so why is it named after such a positive food item? Yes, the shape of the wheel is bent in such a way that it resembles a folded tortilla or crunchy corn shell. But it seems like a shame to use such a beautiful word for such a sad sight.

But maybe referring to the wheel as “Tacoed” isn’t a negative thing at all…

According to Bike Boo Boos, “A wheel in this condition will never be the same again. Even when it’s fixed, the wheel may prefer this new shape and “pop” back into the tacoed condition at any time.”

It appears that after trying a taco for the first time, even a bicycle wheel will prefer to be tacoed for the rest of it’s life. That’s news to us Taco Scientists. We previously believed that only humans and some non-human animals preferred tacos. There will need to be new scientific studies on the taco preferences of two-wheeled vehicles before we can make recommendations on whether or not one should taco a wheel on purpose. So for the mean time, do not try this at home.

 

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail