Maybe you’ve heard of this so-called sweet potato toast thing. People have been going nerking futz putting photos on Instagram of slabs of toasted sweet potato piled sky high with all the toppings. This is something that, while interesting to me from a “hey that’d be cool for gluten free people” perspective, I had absolutely no interest in actually trying for myself.
Except then I decided: This is the year. This is the year I begin take my body back and get rid of that little bit of extra kid weight that’s been hanging around like the one pile of laundry that always seems to escape.
I may have begun to see a facial sag. Plus I saw a video of this 80 year old bodybuilding grandma and was all like, dang, granny. I want to be just like you.*
So. I’m cutting grains out of my diet for a bit. Cause when you’re a short female like me, ain’t nobody looking at a quarter of a bagel or a box crackers and saying 2 constitutes a serving.
Nope.
Bye bye morning bagel, slathered with that rich oozy buttery salty deliciousness that I love, served with my morning tea. I will miss you. But my husband won’t miss you, cause he refused to come on this dieting journey with me. He gets to eat all the bread things.
Including this bagel.
Dear buttered bagel, I miss you.
So what do I get to eat instead? If you said sweet potato, you get a gold star.
Before this last month or so, when I thought of sweet potatoes, all I thought of was mashed, a casserole decorated marshmallows for American Thanksgiving, or (if I wanted to go all out) these little bite-size smoky scalloped sweet potato things I made years ago which were SO GOOD that I’ve decided it’s too dangerous to make them unless you’ve got a bunch of people over to eat them before you can.
Why did I link this. OMG. Torture.
But we can’t have smoky scalloped sweet potatoes. And I can’t have my bagel. But I can have sweet potato toast, and now that you’re here and we’re talking about this sweet potato toast craze that’s sweeping the nation, I want to be absolutely honest with you.
Sweet potato is not toast.
It is sweet potato.
No matter how thinly I slice it, I will never be able to pretend it is toast. Much less my lost morning bagel. It doesn’t have the texture or taste to pretend it is what it isn’t. Heck, I can’t even get it to photograph pretty once it’s done with my toaster.
(Actual photograph of sweet potato toast. I tried.)
But you know what? It’s OK. It’s OK that it’s sweet potato, and it’s OK that it doesn’t taste like toast. It’s OK cause it even though it doesn’t look like something Instagram worthy layered with 18 toppings, and sometimes it’s a little bit more crispy than I can be bothered to fix, it is pretty good when you accept it for what it is.
This is a chewy slice of toasted sweet potato. And despite how it looks, it it actually pretty good – if you’re not expecting it to be like toast.
Because I’m trying to not cry about inability to eat mah bagel enjoy life, and instead of loading it with an extra 800 calories of avocado and poached eggs** and other hippie stuff, I enjoy my toasted sweet potato lightly buttered with my new favourite product, Gay Lea Spreadables. I like Spreadables cause it tastes like butter… cause it is just butter, except it’s got a bit of unsaturated canola in it so you can keep it in the fridge without it going rock hard. This is an awesome advance in technology for butter lovers everywhere.
They’ve got a Cinnamon & Brown Sugar version available in some stores too, which would also go excellently on toasted sweet potato.
It’s also good on my veggies when I need to finish with just a dab of butter, like green beans (super good). But if you’re going to be a dieting holdout like my husband, I suppose you could also put it on things like your pancakes and bagels instead.
Disclosure: I am part of the Gay Lea Ambassador Campaign and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.
