Today's Recipe - Golden Spinach and Sweet Potato Healthy Sauté

Today's Recipe
 
If you don't know what to serve for dinner tonight ...

Enjoy the combination of spices that gives this spinach and sweet potato dish a unique flavor. Spinach is one of the most nutrient-rich vegetables around and the sweet potatoes add fiber and an extra dose of health-promoting carotenoids to this dish. Enjoy!

Golden Spinach and Sweet Potato Healthy Sauté
Prep and Cook Time: 35 minutes
Ingredients:

• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4 medium cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup + 1 TBS chicken or vegetable broth
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp coriander
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/4 tsp cardamom
• 1 TBS fresh lemon juice
• 2 cups sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 6 oz frozen spinach, thawed
• 2 TBS chopped fresh cilantro
• salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Chop onions and mince garlic and let sit for 5 minutes to bring out their health-promoting benefits.
2. Heat 1 TBS broth in a large stainless steel skillet. Healthy Sauté onion in broth over medium heat for 5 minutes stirring frequently. Add garlic and continue to sauté for another minute.
3. Add seasonings and lemon juice and stir to mix thoroughly. Add broth and sweet potatoes. Simmer covered over low heat, stirring occasionally, until sweet potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes. Uncover to allow sauce to thicken and cook another couple minutes.
4. Press water out of spinach and add to sweet potatoes. Cook uncovered for a 3-4 more minutes to allow sauce to thicken. Add cilantro, salt, and pepper.

Serves 4

Printer Friendly Version of Golden Spinach and Sweet Potato Healthy Sauté
In-Depth Nutritional Profile for Golden Spinach and Sweet Potato Healthy Sauté
Healthy Food Tip

Could you list some foods that are bad to eat?

There are very few natural, whole foods that we would consider "bad" to eat. In and of themselves, and prepared in a way that preserves their natural nutrient composition, virtually all foods are good for you! It's usually what we do to foods that make them bad for us. In other words, we can turn any good food into a bad food by destroying its natural and beneficial qualities.
Here are some of the steps we can take to turn a good food into a bad food:

• We can fry it in fat.
• We can overprocess it and destroy too many of its nutrients.
• We can grow it in unnatural soil that has been treated with synthetic fertilizer or chemical additives.
• We can spray it with pesticides while it is growing.
• We can add synthetic chemical ingredients to it, like synthetic colors or flavors.
• We can add synthetic preservatives to it to extend its shelf life far beyond its natural shelf life.

Common examples of "good" foods turned into "bad" foods include:

• Whole grains that have been turned into 60% extraction grain flours, in which the majority of original vitamins and minerals are lost along with removal of the bran and the germ. (Any baked good with 0 grams of fiber per serving would be a great example of a good food turned bad through excess processing.)
• A whole fruit turned into a low-pulp or pulp-free fruit juice, with all of the pulp nutrients being lost from the juice
• Nearly colorless, overcooked vegetables that have lost their vibrant greens and yellows due to excessive exposure to heat
• Any prepackaged food that is a mystery in terms of its ingredient list and which contains more synthetic additives than whole food components
• White, granulated sugar that has been stripped of virtually all nutrients contained in the original sugar cane plant

For more information on this topic, please see:

• What are the World's Healthiest Foods?
• What are the Health Benefits of Eating the World's Healthiest Foods?