Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Every Tuesday night John does a web show right around 7.  Because of this show, John typically stops and gets a sandwich from Blimpie on his way home for work and chows down before the show.  That leaves me to make whatever I want for dinner without worrying about whether or not John will eat it.  (For those of you who don't know, John is a fairly picky eater.  He's getting better, but it's still a struggle balancing my desire to try new recipes with his picky eating habits).  I look forward to Tuesdays and the opportunity they present to try all sorts of new recipes.

Last week I tried a recipe I found on the good ol' Pinterest.  Seriously I love that website!  It is a fantastic source for crafts, recipes, outfit ideas, wedding planning, adorable animal pics, random life hacks, quotes. .  .you name it you can probably find it on Pinterest. It's awesome.

I based my dinner on this recipe I found on Pinterest.  I did modify a bit though.  Here's what I changed:

First I just used regular ol' black beans from a can.  As it turns out, I didn't happen to have a spare black bean burger hanging out in my fridge.  I drained and rinsed the beans and added cumin, granulated garlic, onion powder, salt, pepper, and ground red pepper.  They were really tasty and I probably could have just eaten that for dinner but alas the potato was baking so I stuck to the game plan.

I didn't have any pepper jack cheese at home and I really didn't feel like going back to the store.  Yes I live a stone's throw away from a grocery store.  But I was feeling lazy and I had other shredded cheese at home so I just used what I had.  I ended up using a fiesta blend or maybe it was a Mexican Style blend of cheese. It had cheddar and Monterrey jack and maybe another kind of cheese.  Whatever it was, it was tasty.

I don't know if I didn't cook the potato long enough, but it did NOT scoop out of the skin easily, nor did it mash well.  As it turns out I'm not really picky about how my food looks as long as I know what it is and that it is edible.  Here is my finished product:

I am by no means a professional food photographer.  Can't you tell?  

This was really tasty.  I know John would never go for it, but I would definitely eat it again.  If you like avocado and sweet potatoes I definitely recommend this dish.

On a somewhat different note, how does one take a good picture of food?  All of my plates (except for one random plate I acquired probably from a college apartment) have some sort of color or pattern to them.  No matter what camera I use, the food just doesn't look as appetizing as the professional photos one sees in magazines (or on other blogs for that matter).  I'd like to think my cooking is an actual representation of the normal, every day, non professional cook.  I don't worry about my food looking like it came out of a 5 star restaurant.  It's all eaten within 20 minutes of getting on the plate, so why worry about how pretty it looks? This got me thinking about possibly including more recipe/craft type posts here, showing what a NORMAL person can produce based off of magazine recipes and Pinterest.  Because lets face it MOST people aren't professional chefs.  Most people don't devote their entire lives to creating the best pictures of inanimate objects that they consume immediately after taking the picture.  While I would love to be able to produce 5 star restaurant quality food every single day and then be able to take a picture worthy of magazine covers to display said food, it's just no realistic for me. After all I am Just an Average 20 Something. . .