Sweet Potato Fries (your new favorite snack)

When I started my little culinary adventures, I had these grand ideas that I would start out with really, really simple recipes (like my one ingredient "ice cream") and work my way up to something spectacular and difficult. I would become a super chef at home, and wow even my hard-to-impress, culinary-school-attending sister.

But now, looking over my recipes from the last 3 months, I've realized--all of my recipes are super easy. From almond milk to kale chips, most of my recipes involve few ingredients and a couple steps. And you know what? I'm perfectly okay with that. Sometimes the best things are also the simplest.

That realization is the reason I can confidently say that the following recipe will probably become one of your new favorite snacks. As always, there are very few ingredients and very few steps--but lots of nutrition!

Sweet Potato Fries

You'll need:

• 1 or 2 sweet potatoes (for 1-3 servings; adjust as needed)
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Sea salt
• Pepper
• Curry powder
• An oven preheated to 400 degrees
• Something to distract you during the time the fries are baking, while you must endure the incredible aroma filling your kitchen

If you purchased organic sweet potatoes, you probably don't need to peel them--maybe just give them a rinse and dry them very thoroughly (so the olive oil will stick). If your potatoes were conventionally grown, as I believe mine were, it's probably best to peel them at this point.

Next, slice up the potatoes into fry-shaped slices. You can do them as wedges or skinnier fries--but the bigger the fries, the longer they will take to bake. Mine were somewhere in between wedges and "normal" fries.

Once sliced, put them in a bowl and drizzle some olive oil over them--two tablespoons should do the trick--and sprinkle some sea salt, pepper, and curry powder on top. Tip: go light on the sea salt and a little heavier on the other spices; your blood pressure will thank you!

To make sure all the fries are evenly coated, toss them around to spread the oil and spices. You can use utensils, but I prefer to dive right in and get my hands dirty. Spread them on a baking sheet and set the timer for 15 minutes.

Now, here's where you'll want to distract yourself. Go read a book, take a short, brisk walk--something. Anything to get out of the kitchen so you're not tortured by the delicious smell emanating from your oven!

After the 15 minutes are up, take them out of the oven and turn them over. I am terribly sorry to say that you'll still have to wait a little while before diving in. Put them back in the oven for another 15-25 minutes, depending on how crispy you want your fries to be, and distract yourself once again.

When the timer finally goes off, let them cool for a few minutes, and then--finally--enjoy!

Love it/like it/lesson learned?

To illustrate whether I liked them or not, let me tell you this: Chris and I originally planned to save some fries for other people.

The plate was empty within 5 minutes.

Luckily, you don't have to feel guilty about this snack. I won't bore you with all the benefits of sweet potatoes, but you can read an in-depth nutritional profile here.

And now, I turn to you: have you ever made sweet potato fries? What kind of variations have you tried? Personally, I think it would be fun to try sweet sweet potato fries...

One thing is for sure--I will be revisiting this recipe again.

And again. And again.

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