Curried Sweet Potatos, aka Low Cal Comfort Food

This is kind of a stupid recipe - it seems almost too easy to be worth blogging. But I was thinking to myself, what if there's someone out there missing out on this delicious treat?

The problem with most comfort food is that it's really intensely caloric. Polenta, for example, runs about 90 calories/3 T. That means if you eat half a cup of it, you're eating 240 - and that's before putting butter and cheese and whatever else in it. Other types of comfort food, like mac and cheese, latkes, French toast, and fried chicken (I don't eat this last one, but I remember my grandmother making it when I was young, so it could be a CF) fall into the "don't ask, you won't like the answer" category.

What we need, obviously, is something that can be prepared quickly after a hard day, which is tasty, filling, and relatively low calorie and healthy (something fried chicken would never, ever be described as).

Ingredients

• 1 sweet potato, washed and poked full of holes
• 1.5 T. margarine or butter, softened
• 1 tsp brown sugar, not packed
• about 1/2 - 3/4 tsp Indian curry paste

Methodology

1. Put the sweet potato in the microwave for 5 minutes.

2. Mix the margarine, brown sugar, and curry in a small bowl until well combined. You may want to taste and add more curry or brown sugar, depending on how you feel. I've found these proportions work pretty well, though.

3. When potato is cooked (you can tell by sticking a butter knife or similar into it - if you feel something crunchy, it's not done yet), take it out and split it open. Put margarine mixture on (I usually don't use all of it), add salt to taste. Enjoy!

Notes

*Lame, right? But good. Depending on the caloric content of your margarine and curry and the size of your sweet potato, this runs about 250 calories. It's perfect for when you have just come home from karate and are starving, maybe because your sensei made you run burnout heats and then do like 100 push ups and sit ups. And it's equally perfect for lazy Saturday mornings when your whole body is kind of tired and you're beginning to think getting out of bed at all was kind of a mistake. Not that I've been in either of those situations recently. *cough*

*If you are still here reading, here is a link to a WikiHow article about how to celebrate the Ides of March. Sweet potatoes aren't on there, but I'm not of Italian descent, so I don't care that much.

*0/7 on the disaster scale. Fantastic!