I love when those happy kitchen experiments turn into something wonderful and you think - We should have been doing this all along.
I like to make a big batch of Pulled Pork, Cilantro Lime Rice and Spicy Black Beans and some Cilantro Ranch and then we'll eat it a few different ways during the week. We'll have the traditional loaded salad and then make burritos later in the week.
But this time, Joseph and were home along working for our usual Friday lunch and I got up to warm up the leftovers and finish the last of our salad fixin's - except were were completely out of lettuce. Not a green leaf in sight. So, Plan B, except we were all out of tortillas.
At this point, I have been looking forward to these flavors all morning and I was hungry. Lunch was supposed to be a quick warm-up and I had work to do, I didn't want to stand in the kitchen and make a whole meal from the beginning.
So I had a little spark of an idea, I thought I remember seeing someone making "bowl" recipes on top of baked sweet potatoes.
Joseph loves sweet potatoes and so I thought I would be the perfect time to try it - and the flavors would probably go really well together.
So I put the sweet potatoes in to cook, you can use the microwave, the oven, I used the insta-pot here, because potatoes are the only thing I have figured out how to make in it so far.
Then while they were cooking, I started warming everything else up. When I had all my topping ready, I opened the sweet potato and filled it full with our leftover salad ingredients.
I was so pleased with how this turned out and Joseph was over the moon about it. I also discovered that eating it this way cuts down on the cost, since I can use sweet potato more and less of the pork.
The flavors mix together perfectly and it is absolutely delicious. I am anxious to see what other rice bowls and salads that I can add to sweet potatoes to make "new" dishes.
Cooking once and eating twice is an important part of how I make my time / budget in the kitchen work and this is going to be a great way to stretch those ingredients one meal further.
