It doesn't get much simpler than this when you wanna prepare a wholesome, easy, delicious recipe for yourself. We've got oven-baked sweet potatoes, potatoes, eggplant and garlic paired with a spinach salad, all topped off with tomatoes, sunflower seeds and bell peppers. This meal is also pretty cheap to make because it's mostly sweet potatoes and potatoes (I can get these for $1.00/lb at the grocery store and farmer's market). In case you didn't already know this magical fact, I will let you in on it now: when garlic is baked it basically turns into garlic butter. Praise the heavens and all that is good. The cloves hidden under their skin transform into creamy, flavourful pockets of garlic spread that you can cover your meal in. It's fabulous to the maximum.

I will ACTUALLY be posting more and more savoury recipes for you all to enjoy, because meals like this are what my dinner looks like every night now. For awhile there, I didn't wanna share my dinners because they didn't have much colour. I was eating a lot of rice, potatoes and cauliflower. Healthy? Yes. Vibrant-looking? Not so much. But Instagram has inspired me! I kept seeing all these gorgeous lunch and dinner pics and realized: where's the colour in my meals!? So I have added it back in with salads, sweet potatoes, yams, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, pumpkin seeds, and more. Once I found grocery stores that sold sweet potatoes for a dollar per pound, I rejoiced. I absolutely adore sweet potatoes (especially since Jack's grandma showed me the light of baking them whole in the oven) and they are one of the most nutritious foods on the planet! Some tribes and civilizations historically have lived mainly off sweet potatoes or yams! Firstly because they have trouble hunting/gathering enough other food but they also ARE ABLE to live off mostly sweet potatoes or yams because they have so much of what you need! Calories, carbs, nutrients, vitamins, hurrah! It's like nature decided to throw one nearly perfect meal into a singular root vegetable for our convenience! Evolution doesn't work like that at all but still, you get where I'm comin' from. Besides, that orange colour is such a winner. Buying organic sweet potatoes and yams is certainly better than buying conventional ones, but around here that usually means at least double the price. Since they are a staple of my diet, and also one of the least contaminated conventionally grown foods, I am okay purchasing non-organic ones, but I do like to treat myself sometimes. I always buy my potatoes organic because we can get amazing ones here for good prices from the farmers market, so I can't pass that up. Support local!

ROASTED VEGGIES with BUTTERY GARLIC + SPINACH SALAD

Veggies:
1 sweet potato or yam
1 cup baby potatoes
3 small eggplants (mine were super tiny)
1 head of garlic
1 teaspoon coconut oil

Salad:
3 cups spinach leaves
Juice of a lime
1 teaspoon maple syrup
2 chopped heirloom tomatoes
1 chopped red bell pepper
1 tablespoon sunflower seeds
Black pepper and sea salt (optional) 

To prepare the veggies: preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wash your root veggies and dry them. Poke some holes in the sweet potato/yam. Slice the eggplants and rub them in a little coconut oil. Bake everything on a parchment paper lined pans and bake for 30 minutes, then see how it's all doing. My little potatoes, eggplant, head of garlic and sweet potato were all soft by this point so I took everything out, but if you have a large sweet potato/yam it will take longer to cook. (And yes, I did simply throw a head of garlic into the oven and it ended up perfect. You just have to peel off the skin to get at the goodness once it's done baking.)

To make the salad: mix the greens with lime juice, maple syrup, black pepper and salt (if using). Throw on the tomatoes and pepper, and sprinkle with sunflower seeds. Pair this with all your baked treasures and enjoy! 

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