Peanut, Peanut Butter (and jelly)

Who else sang the title of that post? No one, just me? Moving on...

This week I've been using a lot of peanut butter in my recipes. Which is kind of funny, because the only time I really like peanut butter is in a Reeses (not to mention their marketing dept. rocks my socks off). But I digress.

The weekend was busy like usual, and it seemed to be Sunday night all too quickly. We needed something relatively quick since I had a coach's meeting at 5:30, and the Mr. was mowing our out of control grass. I decided to make Spicy Pasta with Sweet Potatoes, minus a little bit of the spice since the girls would be eating it too.

The sweet potatoes were by far the best part, and I would definitely make those again just to eat as a side dish. The pasta was crazy rich. I couldn't even eat a whole bowl of it, but it was definitely filling. This would be a really good dish if you're looking for something vegetarian.

Shopping List:

• 1 large sweet potato peeled and cut into cubes (about 2 cups)
• 1 tbls olive oil
• 1/2 tsp chili powder
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 8 oz pasta (I used Rigatoni)
• 3 oz pckg cream cheese - cut up
• 1/3 C peanut butter (I used creamy, but crunchy could be interesting!)
• 2 tsp chili sauce (I just used hot sauce I already had)
• 1 tbls soy sauce
• 6 green onions (those were just for garnishing so I skipped that step)

Place cut up sweet potatoes in a bowl. Mix together the chili powder, sugar and cinnamon. Drizzle potatoes with olive oil, then add in your dry mix, and make sure all the potatoes are evenly coated. Spread out on a baking sheet, and bake at 450 for about 20 minutes (the bigger the cubes the longer they'll take to cook). Cook your pasta and drain, reserving 1 cup of the water. In the pasta pan mix together peanut butter, cream cheese, hot sauce and soy sauce over medium heat. Slowly add in the pasta water while mixing until you get the sauce to a consistency you like. If you like thicker sauce add less water. Pour sauce over pasta and add sweet potatoes!


Peanut Butter Recipe #2

I'm not a morning person, and that's putting it nicely. Even though I'm making much more of a conscious effort to eat better/cook more/eat out less often, I rarely eat breakfast during the week. Coffee is the breakfast of champions right? No? Damn. Well anyhoo. I found a pretty simple recipe for a breakfast smoothie (I'm talkin super simple, I'm betting you already have everything in your fridge/pantry!), and I was all about it. Throw some things in a blender and go, now I can handle that in the 2 extra seconds I have in the mornings before work. And added bonus: the girls loved it too.

Shopping List/Items you already have:

• 2 bananas (peeled, sliced and frozen)
• 1 cup of milk
• 1 1/2 tbls cocoa powder (unsweetened)
• 1 to 1 1/2 tbls peanut butter
• 1 tbls maple syrup or honey or agave (sweetener of your choice!)

Throw it all in your blender, and boom. Delish smoothie. The texture is really almost ice cream like, this would also make for a perfect midnight (ok 10pm) snack. Mine was a little bit banana-y so the next time I make it I'll probably only use 1.5 bananas, but these were kind of big, so if they're smallish bananas maybe stick with the 2.

If anybody makes any of these let me know how it goes and if you like em!