Dinner with sweet potatoes...Sweet Potato Black Bean Burrito's

The last few weeks we have received sweet potatoes with every single veggie box. This is the first week that we have not received any, therefore we have been almost "swimming" in sweet potatoes. I have used a couple and served them with our Easter ham; mashed with a little bit of OJ, then baked topped with brown sugar and Earth Balance. Yummy :) But we still have so many, many left...that was until tonight. I had thought about cooking a few with black beans, ginger, and coconut milk like a curry of sorts. Today I looked again, and searched...I came up with a couple of different options that looked good to me. Sweet Potato Gnocci, and/or Sweet Potato Black Bean Burrito's. I let Ron choose and it was burritos...So a first time for me. I have never made burrito's before, but they turned out delicious. Both Alena and Mia Rose loved the filling. I served it with sliced Avocado, Tomato's (curtesy of our veggie box), Toffuti Sour Cream, rice, and a side of browned Chorizo....below is the adopted recipe (my changes are in italic) along with a link to its source. And by the way, we still have more sweet potatoes left, but unfortunately not enough to make the Gnocci. Maybe we will get some more next week ;)

Sweet Potato Black Bean Burrito

• 5 cups peeled cubed sweet potatoes
  1/2 teaspoon salt
  2 teaspoons canola or other vegetable oil
  1 large onion
  3 large garlic cloves, minced or pressed
  1 teaspoon mild chili powder (change by me)
  2 teaspoons ground cumin
  2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 3 cans of black beans (drained)
  3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  1 teaspoon salt
  8 eight-inch flour tortillas
  
  Preparation:
• Cook sweet potatoes with a little salt and water to cover until they are soft. This takes about 10 minutes.
• Warm up some oil in a pan and add onions, garlic, chili powder if using and a little bit of salt. Bring heat to no higher than medium and cover pan. Sautee until onions are soft and translucent --> takes about 10 minutes. Then add cumin and coriander and cook for another 2 minutes.
• Mash the sweet potatoes, black beans, lemon juice, and salt. (The recipe also calls for cilantro but I omitted it). You can mash with a potato masher, food processor, or hand blender.
• Add onion/garlic/spice mix to the sweet potato mash and mix it all up
• Fill each tortilla with about 1/2 - 3/4 cup, roll it up, and place it - seam down - in a lightly oiled baking dish.
• Cover with foil and bake for about 30 minutes.

Recipe Source: Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites (Clarkson Potter Publishers) found on http://homecooking.about.com/od/vegetablerecipes/r/blv87.htm

One last thing...we had so many that I ended up freezing 5 of the burriots for lunches :) Yay for left overs....

Dear Insurance Company I really do not like you...

Guess I am in a complaining mode today...Did you know that it costs around $300 a girl to get the blood work done. Can you believe it?! I am sure you can. Now, let me ask you how much do you think our co-pay for that would be? It's an essential exam both kids have Galactosemia so one would think that the deductible would be minimal, but you know what? Totally wrong. Our share for each (!!!) child is over $60. Isn't that appalling ? Tell me please, how can it be - Dear Insurance Company - that you won't cover the entire expense? Did I mention that we already pay a decent amount in premiums each month? Well, it's official I don't like you. Thank you for reading...

Compound Pharmacies and Insurance coverage...

Luckily our girls are rarely sick. The last time we needed to get drugs was when New Seasons still had their Pharmacy. Well, the one year lucky streak just ran out as Mia Rosie has an ear infection and needs antibiotics. This time I wanted to try out a "new" pharmacy one from the "compounding list". In any case, I went to the Pharmacy explained what we needed (Galactosemia = no milk sugar, etc.) which was great. The pharmacist was very nice but he did not have the powder to compound the drug. He did however have the "stuff" to make the liquid. I then showed him my insurance card "Oh, no we do not take that insurance. We only take about three (!!!) different plans" he told me. I asked why not and he told me that the insurance companies just do not adequately reimburse for compounded drugs. He thought that most compounding pharmacies do not even take insurance. WOW!!! - Isn't that awful?! Yes, you can pay for it and make a claim to the insurance company in hopes that you won't need to fight it....


In our case it was not a problem. The pharmacist read through the entire product told me the brand and that it was fine. We then proceeded to our regular small pharmacy and everything was a-OK. The point of this however is that I find it awful that insurance companies refuse to pay a fair price for compounded drugs.

Rescheduled clinic appointment...new year, new deductible...

I am just venting. The girls had an appointment at the Metabolic Clinic last week. We had a major snow storm here, the once every 40 years kind of storm, so the clinic was cancelled. Made sense b/c we would not have been able to go. The streets were not cleared off, chains required, and OHSU sits on top of a major west side hill...(pictures of the snow are posted on my other blog - http://germanpdx.blogspot.com/). In any case, the appointments are now rescheduled for next week Tuesday which is great but it is a brand new insurance year. So we have to start up again with the $500 deductible for each person before insurance pays...OK I really should not gripe, I am so happy that the girls are well taken care off, but you know it just never ends. Right?!