As you may know, Blake and I are Blood Bank Junkies. We donate as often as possible. For me, that’s about 3 times a year because I give whole blood (which has a longer wait period in between,) and I often have low iron, which delays my donation time. Blake, however, gives platelets almost every other week. He has good donations most of the time, but sometimes he gets really weak and dizzy and weird feeling. When this occurs, we try to cook him up a good recovery meal to get him back on his feet and back to donating!

Last night I made sweet potato home fries with cheese and a spicy yogurt dipping sauce on the side. We also had kale with caramalized red onions and mushrooms and some turkey bacon, white cheddar, and egg sammiches.

Sweet Potato Home Fries

• 3 medium sweet potatoes
• olive oil
• coarse ground salt
• shredded mozarella and/or cheddar or any other fave cheese!

Pre-heat oven to 350-400 degrees. Rough cut the sweet potatoes into thick fries by cutting them in half long ways, placing the flat side down and then slicing into fries as close to the same size as possible.

Heat a cast iron pan (or whatever frying pan you have) to high heat. Add a little oil and sear each side of the fries a few at a time (as many as can fit side-by-side in the pan at once) to lock in some crispy. They should be browned but not blackened.

If using a cast iron, just toss the fries back in the pan together with a little olive oil and sprinkle a bit of salt over the top before popping them in the oven. You may also put them in any deep baking dish you have. Cook for 15-30 mins or until the fries are soft when poked with a fork. I like to stir them every 10 mins or so and check on their progress. The last 5 mins of baking time, sprinkle some shredded cheeses on top if desired. Garnish with pickled jalapeños.

To make a dipping sauce, I combined fat-free Greek yogurt with sriracha hot sauce, salt, pepper, a few drops of Worcestershire and some dill.

A few more pics of our meal in progress:

turkey bacon

Home baked bread!