Good while it lasted
Anyone who has celebrated Thanksgiving knows that there are some holiday dishes that are good when eaten for the actual meal, but really great as leftovers the refrigerator the next day. For me, the ultimate of these is mashed sweet potatoes. My mom always topped hers with a layer of marshmallows, toasted in the oven, so that the leftovers were swirled with the sweet, melted bits of goo that weren’t devoured the day before. This preparation has left me with a lifetime expectation that sweet potatoes, despite their significant nutritional benefits, should be dessert-like and eaten right from the container like ice cream.
Lacking both marshmallows and the desire to consume corn syrup in cloud formation, I adapted the “Sweet Sweet Potatoes” recipe from the Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites
Transferring the sliced sweet potatoes and remaining liquid to a large bowl, I added a few splashes of half and half (using up whatever’s in the fridge, yet again), then blended — first with the blending attachment on my immersion blender to get the potatoes fully pureed, then with the whisk attachment to fluff it up. It made for an ideal serving of comfort food, so smooth and easy to eat, and even better the next day.
I had the leftovers for lunch, and they comforted me through the news received earlier in the morning during a follow up visit to the oral surgeon. Because my jaw is still in pain, and my bite is slightly off, the doctor is wiring my jaw shut for four weeks. It’s the prudent thing to do - the alternative risks a healed but misaligned jaw, which sometimes can only be fixed by purposely breaking the jaw again. Do. Not. Want. So it’s a setback, but I can deal with it, especially if the blender recipes keep rolling in like they have been.
It was good while it lasted, however short, both that batch of whipped sweet potatoes and the freedom of an unwired fractured jaw.
