Miso Butter Sweet Potatoes
Plus, a challenge to relax for 5 minutes & a cookbook with Thai party food
Hello!
My best days always start with a walk or jog through the park near my house. It’s not something I can fit in every day, but when I do, what a difference it makes! I often take a route that passes by an Adirondack chair someone set out in the grass. It’s sitting in a beautiful spot with a lovely view and looks so inviting.
But have I ever accepted the chair’s invitation to sit down? Not once. In all the years I’ve passed this chair, I’ve never once sat down or seen another person relaxing for a moment in the sun.
In some ways, just the serene presence of the chair has the intended affect of making me feel more relaxed and happy. But this week, I finally asked myself the obvious question, why don’t I sit down?
What would happen if I sat down for just 5 minutes?
I always feel like I have to hurry home to get something done, but it’s ridiculous to think that 5 minutes of rest would derail my productivity for the day. I don’t want productivity to be my main goal in life. I don’t want to rush from one thing to next, measuring the value of each day by how productive I was.
It’s hard though, isn’t it, balancing the desire to be productive and “successful” with the knowledge that there is more to life than just getting things done. Maybe finding the elusive balance people talk about begins with little things, like sitting in a chair for five minute listening to the birds sing.
What about you? How do you take a moment each week to stop and rest? Is it a cup of coffee in the morning or lunch outside in a park? Maybe you just sit in your car for five minutes when you get home, before walking in the front door?
This Week’s Recipe: Miso Butter Sweet Potatoes
Miso month continues! Last week I sent you a recipe for miso butter salmon and paid subscribers also got my new favorite salad dressing, lemon miso vinaigrette.
This week we’re exploring another variation of miso butter, this time as a topping for sweet potatoes.
For this recipe, you only need two ingredients: butter and miso paste. You can then add maple syrup (for sweetness) or green onions (to keep things very savory). Either way, you really can’t go wrong. Both are delicious.
When salty miso butter melts over warm slices of roasted sweet potato and pools on the plate with a drizzle of maple syrup, it is sweet-salty heaven. Next Thanksgiving please forgo your regular sweet potato recipe and serve miso butter sweet potatoes. You won’t regret it.
That being said, whole steamed sweet potatoes topped with miso butter and green onions are a uniquely delicious side dish. It’s a new and very flavorful version of baked potato.
The recipe includes instructions for either roasting the sweet potatoes or steaming them in your Instant Pot. You can find the recipe here.
Dinner Last Week
I’m always curious about what other families are eating. Aren’t you? Here’s what my crew ate last week.
The kids and I were visiting family for spring break on Monday and returned Tuesday evening. We stopped for burgers and fries at In-N-Out during our long car drive, so I didn’t cook dinner on Tuesday. For the rest of the short week my cooking energy was low. Is it just me, or is it hard to transition back into real life after vacation?
Wednesday: I avoided a trip to the grocery store by just cooking what was in the fridge: Boneless, skinless chicken thighs roasted in the oven, plus white rice and frozen green beans.
Thursday: We ate Trader Joe’s ravioli and marinara, roasted zucchini and a fresh and crunchy green salad made from my favorite spring lettuce, Little Gem. Little Gem is a cross between Romaine and Butter Lettuce and has such a delightfully crisp texture. It’s really good with creamy salad dressing. If you see Little Gem at the grocery store or farmers market, buy some!
Friday: Once again our Friday dinner was Chicken Pad Thai from Costco because I guess I don’t feel like cooking on Fridays anymore. I also served roasted broccoli, which made the meal feel healthy enough.
Cookbooks
If I wanted to make homemade Pad Thai (instead of buying it from Costco) I could’ve just opened up the Night + Market cookbook on my shelf. It’s probably the easiest pad thai recipe I’ve found, because it uses distilled white vinegar and white sugar instead of harder to find tamarind and palm sugar.
The Night + Market cookbook shares Chef Kris Yenbamroong’s “brash style of Thai party food” and has a wide selection of “stripped down traditional recipes to wring maximum flavor out of minimum hassle.”
Night + Market is our favorite neighborhood Thai restaurant. I got the cookbook so I could make some of our favorite dishes at home, but so far we just keep ordering in because it’s so much easier. I haven’t lost hope though, and one day I will attempt to make some of the mouthwatering dishes in this cookbook.
There’s a helpful chapter at the beginning that explains all of the essential Thai pantry ingredients you’ll need and all of the brands that Chef Yenbamroong recommends.
That’s it for this week! The eclipse was a little bit anticlimactic in LA and we were the only people in our neighborhood standing outside with glasses. But, we still had fun and I did love looking at photos of other people happily coming together in large groups to enjoy an event. More of that, please!
This weekend we’ll stop by a neighborhood citrus swap organized by Josie’s school. We’ll bring some oranges from our backyard tree and I’m hoping to swap for a few grapefruits and pomelos.
Hope you have a good weekend!
Jenny
The soup looks great, thank you for sharing