Tight Calves and Roasted Sweet Potato with quick Black Bean Chili

Today was a really great day!

Felt like I had a really productive day at work. Got a lot of stuff done!

Also, the vegan gods smiled down upon me and left a bowl of Mint Chocolate Cliff bars in the break room. Everyone else was suspicious of them. Are you kidding! Cliff bars are delicious! So I got to have a treat at work. :)

Kickboxing was pretty difficult with my sore calf.

No, he's fine. I mean after climbing down 15 flights of stairs, my calves are tight. But I went anyway! They’re feeling a little looser, but I’m still glad tomorrow is a rest day!

So I know I said that I was only going to eat Pumpkin Ziti from now on.  Well, that would make for a pretty boring recipe blog, so I suppose I’ll move on. For now.

Roasted Sweet Potato with Quick Black Bean Chili

2 large sweet potatoes, scrubbed and halved

2 Tbsp. olive oil

½ cup onion

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp cumin powder

2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed

1 can 14.5oz diced tomato w/ juice

1 tsp chipotle chili in adobo sauce

½ tsp salt

2 Tbsp fresh chopped cilantro

Chopped avocado

Potatoes:

-Preheat oven to 450 with the baking sheet inside. (Interesting! I use this technique to make pizza dough crisp. Now the potatoes are going to be crisp!) Halve potatoes and brush cut sides w/ olive oil.

-Roast for 15 min. Flip them over and roast 10 more min. Pierce with a fork. If it’s hard in the middle, add 5 min.  Try again. Repeat until you can easily pierce potatoes.

They do look more crispy!

Black Bean Chili:

-Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a skillet. Add onion. Cook for 8 min on med. Low heat.

-Add garlic, cumin and chili powder. Cook for about a minute.

-Add black beans, tomatoes, ½ cup water or veggie broth, chipotle, and ½ tsp salt. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and cook, covered for 15 min. Take the lid off, and simmer for 5 more minutes.

Put the sweet potato on a plate and mash the insides with a fork. I did kind of a cross hatch with fork and knife.

Ladle the chili on top of the potato.

Add garnishes! Garnish is optional, but avocado was 2 for $1,  and they look pretty. So I went for it!

Mmmm, very good! I actually used cayenne pepper because I was out of chili powder. GAH! PAPRIKA AND CHILI. ON THE LIST!