Why oh why are my family so jolly difficult about orange vegetables? I know they are good eaters and I really shouldn’t complain but I love my beta-carotene and I wish they did too. Every now and again I try something new hoping it will be a winner.

My current read is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver which was recommended to me by Leslie. I’m so glad she did. It’s a wonderful exploration of eating locally and well worth reading by anyone who eats. It’s a little ironic, given the content, that I chose to make an out of season recipe from it this weekend. Eh, I never claimed to be perfect and I was really, really craving some orange.

Whilst the family ate the sweet potato quesadillas, they didn’t love them. Which is a shame because I did love them. A great thing about this recipe is that it goes a long way. I managed to get dinner for the Bread Winner and I, lunch for the whole family and another lunch for the Ankle Biters out of 1 medium sweet potato, one batch of tortillas and half a kilo of cheese. That’s a total cost of $7.50 and 8 serves. Definitely a budget meal.

I simplified the recipe a little in the thermomix. As for the ingredients, I omitted the basil, doubled the onion, garlic and cumin and used my usual cheese mix for Mexican type foods of 1/2 tasty and 1/2 feta. I only used 1 sweet potato as I didn’t want to push my luck. I added a small bunch of shredded silverbeet (chard).

I chopped the onion and garlic in the thermomix and sauteed. Then I added the boiled sweet potato, shredded silverbeet and all the spices. I cooked that at 100 degrees for three minutes on speed 1.

For dinner I spread some sweet potato mixture on a tortilla and covered it with cheese and topped it with another tortilla and continued the stacking until there were three layers of sweet potato and cheese. I baked ina hot oven until the cheese was melty and served with a dollop of sour cream. For lunch, I sprad the sweet potato, added cheese and folded the tortillas like soft tacos. Then baked until melty and served with sour cream. Either way, delicious.