A love affair with sweet potatoes

Tags

cooking, food, running

I had some weird trouble sleeping last night so it didnt feel THAT tough to wake up for my workout this morning. I did 6 miles on the treadmill and 20 minutes of lower body weight training. Shoes felt good again today, which is a hopeful sign. I really think they felt a little off yesterday because I felt dehydrated…it happens. I always have trouble keeping super hydrated during the weekends…I find it so much easier to chug H20 while i’m at work for some reason!

I’m always trying to sneak in my veggies…I was snacking on these today:

Is it strange I only love to snack on these when its warmer outside? They are such a refreshing snack during spring/summerish times. And yes, summerish is a word. 😉

Let’s talk about sweet potatoes for a moment. They take up such a chunk of my heart that I needed to dedicate a full post to them. It mightve been because I was dead set on including one as part of my dinner tonight:

If you can believe it, I had never tasted a sweet potato until I first started dating Kevin. Nutty right? My family was never big into them for some reason and I never had the urge to try them because of that. I lived for years without this wonderful vegetable in my life. The first time I came over for dinner at Kevins parents house, they had made sweet potatoes as a side dish. Kevin, in comparison, had always had sweet potatoes throughout his childhood…although he admitted to me that he didnt start liking them very much until recent years. Who knows, maybe I wouldnt have been a huge fan when I was a kid either. My family tended to have an aversion to healthier foods 😉

The health benefits of sweet potatoes are seriously awesome though. I’ve seen this wonder-veggie pop up a lot in conversation about great foods for runners. According to this article posted on Runners World:

“This Thanksgiving Day standard should be on the plates of runners year-round. Just a single 100-calorie sweet potato supplies over 250 percent of the DV for vitamin A in the form of beta-carotene, the powerful antioxidant. Sweet potatoes are also a good source of vitamin C, potassium, iron, and the two trace minerals manganese and copper. Many runners fail to meet their manganese and copper needs, which can have an impact on performance since these minerals are crucial for healthy muscle function. There are even new sweet-potato varieties that have purple skin and flesh and contain anthocyanidins, the same potent antioxidant found in berries.”

Obviously there are many ways to make sweet potatoes not so healthy…sweet potato fries or drenching them in brown sugar and butter like my wonderful casserole for Thanksgiving come to mind… 😉 But try baking them, roasting them, microwaving them…I promise you wont be sorry!

I still love a good white potato from time to time…but sweet potatoes are kind of always going to steal the spotlight for me from now on. LOVE!

In other non-potato related news, I also had a huge spinach salad to go with my potato:

I mightve put half a container of tomatoes on there. Kevin, if you were planning on eating any of them this week, you were probably sadly mistaken.

Two other new obsessions of the week?

If you like spice, you definitely need to try these pretzel crisps out. Also, expect to see truckloads of ice cream on here as the spring/summer begins. I take it through an IV during the summer months.

I have a 7 mile run on the agenda tomorrow morning…I’m super hoping that I can do it outside, but if its too dark, I will head the gym. I’m craving a good outdoor run though!

Tell me…

Sweet potatoes or white potatoes?

Were you sheltered from sweet potatoes like I was as a child?

Favorite food to have during the spring/summer months?