Mayo-less Tuna Salad and Sweet Potato Surprise

Okay so this post doesn't have much to do with finances but I promised when I started this blog that we would chat about money sprinkled here and there with flavors of other topics. So here goes, let's chat about food today.

Did I ever tell you how much I love food? I mean, I really like food ... like I really enjoy good food! I also enjoy cooking but I get bored with it very quickly. I'm always trying new recipes (although I rarely follow one exactly). Since I love food I'm always challenging myself to cook healthier meals and lighten up some of the old faves that we love here in the South.

Mayo-less Tuna Salad:
One day after a pretty grueling gym workout my menu plan called for a tuna sandwich. Wanting the tuna with the creaminess of the mayo but without the guilt I decided that I'd try the tuna using a little mustard and relish. Uhm -yeah - that didn't work. After a little more thinking, I grabbed some hummus I had in the fridge and put a tablespoon or so in it and it was fabulous! If you've never tried substituting hummus for mayo in your tuna, give it a try and let me know what you think.

Sweet Potato Surprise:
Me love sweet potatoes! It's nothing for me to make some homemade sweet potato fries and have them on hand to grab and go. Last Friday I started thinking of how I could make a flourless, eggless, sugarless sweet potato cookie, croquette, latke, or whatever, just something natural and delicious. My mind started percolating and I began to imagine how to accomplish this. Last night I put all of my thoughts together and came out with a pretty nice sweet potato surprise. Unfortunately I did not measure anything but I used the following ingredients:

• 1 and 1/2 mashed sweet potatoes ( i baked first then mashed them w/a fork)
• approx 1/2 mashed banana (used for sweetness)
• approx 1/2 cups of oats (used Quaker oats 1 minute quick cooking oats)
• raisins, walnuts & pumpkin spice

I mixed all of the above ingredients together. I then took a measuring spoon (tbs) and scooped out little balls and placed them on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. I put the balls in the fridge for a few hours - to harden up a bit. Afterwards, I sprayed a nonstick skillet with Pam and put the balls in the pan, flattening them with my fingers into a little cookie shape. I also baked a few of them using the same technique (I preferred the skillet method best). After a few minutes on each side in the skillet, I removed them with a spatula and viola - I had a wonderful sweet potato surprise! It was so nice having a guiltless, all natural, healthy snack! If you're used to eating sweet potatoes with lots of sugar, you can top the "cookies" with some Agave Nectar, which is an all natural sweetener derived from the Agave Cactus plant. You can even eat the mixture in it's "cookie dough" form ... I did and enjoyed it like I was eating cookie dough.

I plan on playing with this concept even more. Another variation could include using peanut butter rather than sweet potatoes and making peanut butter balls. I wouldn't suggest "cooking" the peanut butter mixture but they would make great balls or squares after they've been refrigerated. Honestly there are many different ways and I plan on exploring several more. After all, a recipe is nothing more than a list of suggestions;-).

Have a wonderful day!