Home » Recipes » Meals » Side Dishes » Cinnamon Maple Roasted Sweet Potatoes (RR September 2016)

Cinnamon Maple Roasted Sweet Potatoes (RR September 2016)

September 21, 2016 By Kelli Shallal MPH RD 19 Comments

I may be compensated through affiliate links in this post. All opinions are my own. .

Cinnamon Maple Roasted Sweet Potatoes are one of the best ways to enjoy the flavors of the fall the healthy way. Perfect as a side dish, to throw in bowls, or even salad!

Hi, Friends! It’s time for another Recipe Redux post! Check out this month’s theme:

First Cooking Recollections

Stir up some of your earliest culinary recollections. Did you stand at your grandmother’s elbow to learn to cook? Or did you learn by stumbling through a cookbook by yourself? Share a healthy recipe and the accompanying story about one of your first cooking memories.

How I Learned To Cook

When I think about the first things that I learned to cook this is what comes to mind:

mac and cheese
top ramen
cereal
frozen meals
canned green beans
boxed cupcakes for my birthday

I don’t remember helping make anything in the kitchen at any time. I’m not sure if I wasn’t invited or didn’t want to but either way, I could barely cook eggs when I got to college. Thankfully, my Grandpa loaded me up with a meal pass and I could eat at the sorority so I didn’t starve. In fact, I did the oppositive of starve, I gained weight. When I started to lose the weight I relied a lot on frozen meals and 100 calorie packs of cookies. However, little by little I became interested in more filling healthy foods like vegetables. Learning to cook has truly been a process of trial and error over the past five years. In fact, I’m still learning even simple things, like how to bake chicken.

I think what I did was find recipes that seemed easy and made me think “I can do that.” As I tried them I built up the confidence to try recipes with more steps and more ingredients. Now, I’m to the point that I have enough experience to know potatoes are hardy little buggers and I can crank that heat up to 400F and bake until they are tender.

I can create my own recipes with confidence that they will taste good and won’t be total flops. However, that only came from trying things on my own and having total flops. Whole batches of muffins, eggs, and stews in the garbage due to too much salt, not cooked enough, and so on. The first time I made my own quiche recipes I practically sat in front of the oven praying for the eggs to set for 45 minutes.

My point is if you want to learn to cook. Start with the easy stuff and work your way up. You may read a recipe wrong and do something wrong, that’s okay it’s all in the process of learning!

I recommend starting to learn to cook staple ingredients like chicken, potatoes, rice, fish and veggies first. Cook ingredients, like these sweet potatoes, that you will be excited to eat and can be used in multiple ways.

For example, I make a batch of these almost weekly for our meal prep and use them as a side dish, in a salad, in a bowl or sometimes for a snack. I love how they make the house smell of warm coconut cinnamon and add a zest of fall flavor to any meal!