Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes

An Excellent Weekend Breakfast or Weeknight Meal, Cost-Effective and Packed with Nutrition

After competing in my last CrossFit competition of the season this past Saturday I have felt like eating everything. I have been hungry just about every minute since the end of the last WOD. Tonight I picked a stick-to-your-ribs recipe probably more common for fall or winter but certainly a delicious and nutrient-dense recipe for anytime of the year.

This recipe serves 4

Ingredients:
4 large sweet potatoes
8 large eggs, cage free and farm fresh for preference
1 medium onion, white, yellow, or red
4 large cloves of garlic
​6 oz cooked bacon, prosciutto, pancetta, or ham

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees

2. Cook the sweet potatoes. Wash and dry them and then prick them all over with a fork to let the heat out as they cook. Then either bake them for 55 minutes at 400 degrees or cook them in the microwave for 20 minutes, turning them over 3 times during the process. (Use a hot pad to turn them)

**Regardless of how you cook your potatoes initially, you will need your oven at 400 degrees later on so get it started pre-heating now, or leave it at 400 once the potatoes are done baking, as the case may be

3. While the potatoes are cooking, cook your bacon if you're using it and then set it aside on some paper towels on a plate to cool enough to be handled. If you're using a cured meat such as porsciutto or pancetta, skip this step. I went with the time honored tradition of choosing what was least expensive in the store, which interestingly turned out to be pancetta

4. Another task to complete while the potatoes are cooking in sauteing the onions and garlic. Put a tablespoon of olive, grapeseed, or the non-vegetable oil of your choice in a medium sized frying pan. Smash the garlic, dice the onion, and saute until onion is anywhere between al dente and translucent, depending on how you like your veggies cooked. Once they're cooked, remove from heat and set aside for a minute

​5. Once the potatoes are done cooking, grab an oven mitt in order to handle them, and slice them lengthwise. Then scoop out the inside if each potato, to within 1/4-1/2 inch from the skin

​6. Arrange the shells in the an oven safe dish like a casserole dish. Keep the scooped-out potato close by, you'll need that in a minute

​7. Take the beaters to the scooped out potatoes. If there are any hard chunks remaining from the cooking process, show them no mercy.

​8. Add the sauteed onions and garlic to the mashed sweet potato, as well as 2/3 of the pancetta or chopped bacon. Then re-mix together. (Like the less well known R. Kelly hit single goes, 'It's the remix to pancetta, hot and fresh out the oven, mama blending those taters, got every athlete here hungry..R. Kelly was paleo before it was cool.

​btw I am totally joking and have no personal knowledge of R Kelly's nutritional habits or if he writes songs about cured meat products)

​9. Add the blended deliciousness back to the potato shells and create a golf ball-sized divot in each shell to make space for the egg

10. Crack one egg into each divot

11. Sprinkle the remaining pancetta over everything and the pop your creation into the oven
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11. Bake at 400 for 20-22 minutes, until eggs are set. We did ours to about over easy stage doneness because we feel farm fresh egg yolk should be a food group in its own right.

Serve and enjoy! This recipe takes some time so while it is great for breakfast, if you have the time and energy on a weekday morning to get this prepared and ready to go, please kindly send me some of your energy. In the meantime, keep this in mind for a weekend breakfast (you can do a good deal of the prep work ahead of time), or a yummy dinner. This recipe keeps well although you'll want to reheat in a toaster oven or conventional oven as eggs do really weird things in microwaves, for reasons which have never been properly explained to me

What did you think of this recipe? Yum city in your house too? Any tweeks you'd suggest? Leave me a comment, I'd love to hear from you