Sunday Roast with a Difference

While the rest of the family tucked into their roast chicken dinners (I did pinch some of their vegetables, but that was overload!), I enjoyed a roast with a difference:

Roast Beetroot, Sweet Potato and Onion

1 lge or 2 small beetroot
2 small sweet potatoes (about the same weight-wise as beetroot)
1 medium onion
Peel, chop into large chunks, sprinkle with salt (and any other seasoning you might like) and drizzle with olive oil.
Roast in oven for about an hour, but turn about half way through.

Serve with salmon, oven baked. I like mine plain and simple, with just a little olive oil drizzled over before baking.

Did you know… that Sweet Potato and Yam is not the same plant? I didn’t, until a short while ago (minutes, in fact). There’s one kind of Yam commonly found in North America, and another, very different kind, which is native to Africa and Asia – and then there’s the Sweet Potato, native to the tropical parts of South America, but now grown widely throughout the world. That’s the kind I eat. It’s at least 5000 years old – although I like mine a bit fresher that that!
I like the Latin name Ipomoea batatas. It is a distant relative of the potato, so perhaps not so strange. It’s related to the garden plant ‘Morning Glory’, too.
Fact: It’s one of our most nutritious vegetables, beating the potato hands down.
(I have nothing against the humble potato. It was a staple of our diet as I grew up, and I can’t imagine anything nicer than boiled potatoes mashed in my mother’s gravy. Real comfort food. Alas, that’s one for the memories. I can’t eat potatoes any more, nor the kind of gravy my mum made.)