What's for supper? Chicken Spaghetti, this and that

Tonight's dinner menu (cleaning out the fridge, groceries tomorrow):

Spaghetti with tomato sauce and chicken
This and that: carrot and celery sticks, cheese...maybe garlic toast...

Whatever fruit we have left
Pumpkin cake made with leftover sweet potato (baked in the toaster oven, it's too hot for the big oven)
Yogurt

Sweet Potato Something Dip

Yesterday I was intrigued to read about a new healthy-ingredients cookbook written for University of Guelph students.  Students who are short on food can get assistance through an on-campus food bank, but they tend to take the familiar stuff first and leave the lentils behind.

Yeah, big surprise.

Anyway, the article I read didn't provide any recipes, but it did mention Sweet Potato Hummus.  An online search for a recipe brought up quite a few variations, most of them pretty "hummusy," and that was fine except that I didn't have the extra ingredients called for like tahini.  I decided to try an online recipe for Super Sweet Potato Hummus, which takes it in a whole different direction.  I don't know if I'd call it hummus so much as just an autumn-flavoured dip or spread. Think pumpkin pie with a bit of bean. It's pretty quick: you just cut up the sweet potato, cook it, and then run it through the food processor with drained chick peas, sweeteners and spices.  I did add some lemon juice at the end--it seemed to need a bit of a boost.

I froze half and took the other half to a church meeting, where it got a thumbs-up from those who tried it.  I didn't have a lot to offer for dipping--corn chips didn't seem to be just right, and neither were vegetables.  I settled on whole-wheat tea biscuits (mini ones) and sliced apples.  (Bagel chips would have been awesome.)

And look at all those food groups!  Even public-school lunchbag critics should like this one.

What's for supper? Red, yellow, orange

The colour theme wasn't deliberate--we weren't having a paintbox party--but last night's dinner did turn out to be colourful.  In a good way.

Meat sauce (ground beef, mushrooms, green peppers, a bit of tomato sauce, basil)
Polenta slices, baked and topped with mozzarella cheese and parsley
Sweet potato oven fries
A bit of lettuce from the garden

Sliced watermelon
Apple-butter muffin cake with apple chopped into it (I had promised muffins, but it was too hot to turn on the big oven, so I made a pan of "cake" in the toaster oven instead)

Frugal substitute: Leftover Sweet Potato Cake

Southern cooks have done this for years--used pureed (cooked) sweet potato where Northerners might use pumpkin, such as in pie.

But have you ever tried it in Pumpkin Cake? It works very well. Just make sure you puree the sweet potato very well--you can mix all the wet ingredients in the blender or food processor, just to be sure. I added a sprinkle of cinnamon-sugar on top before baking--sweet potato always tastes good with a bit of extra cinnamon.

Beats putting out a couple of dollars for a can of pumpkin.

(And of course you can do the same thing with any winter squash that you can get to puree smooth.)