Roasted Sweet Potato Nachos

Layers of roasted sweet potatoes seasoned with salsa verde, black beans, salsa and even taco meat if you've got it--all tucked under a blanket of cheese and baked until bubbly. Serve with tortilla chips for a tasty vegetable appetizer, another Awesome Veggie App {link to my Pinterest board}.

It's time for the Game!

In our family, that could mean Ticket To Ride, Sushi Go!, Qwirkle, Timeline or our newest find, Black Fleet (all game links are Amazon affiliate links). Several years ago, after repeated failures attempts we became a family who plays games together.

We don't play Candyland or Monopoly. To be honest, I never found those games particularly enjoyable and thought I just wasn't the type of person who liked to play games. I was wrong. It wasn't me--it was the games we had. If you'd like to have a blast playing games together, read on. If not, jump down to the nachos.

How did we become a game-playing family? My spouse. His engineer brain took on the task after my efforts failed, and he has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Over the holidays we had 12 people around the table, 3 generations, ages 14-86, laughing to the point of bladder control issues while playing Telestrations.

Telestrations is a combo of Telephone and Pictionary. Each person gets a drawing pad and a list of words. You read a word, draw a picture to describe the word, then pass your pad to the next person who writes a word based on your drawing. That person passes it to the next, who draws a picture based on the word they see, and so on. We bought 2 games so we'd have enough drawing pads for everyone--it's great for large group.

The Board Game Family is the blog where my spouse discovered our first successful games. Check them out here. Once you know the style of game that you like to play, you can find new ones yourself. We've had great success with Spiel des Jahres winners, and now enjoy cooperative as well as competitive games each week. It's great fun--yes I'm saying this about sitting around the dining room table playing games with my teens--and good for our mental and emotional health as well.

We don't feed our games, so the table gets cleared off, hands washed, and food put away before the games come out. If you're interested in another sort of game--say, you wanna watch football while eating these nachos--be my guest. They're certainly yummy and would work for that sort of game too.

For other recipes using sweet potatoes, please see my Sweet Potato Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index for this blog.
Note: the sweet potatoes from our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share are all over the place in size when compared to those I see in the grocery store. I'll give you measurements in cups, not number of potatoes. Use the smaller amount if you don't have a lot of sweet potatoes in your Strategic Winter Squash Reserve in a cold corner of the basement.

Another Note: this is a good use of leftover or planned over taco meat. Another good use is Taco Farro. Still another good use is Taco Rice Tortilla Pizza.

Roasted Sweet Potato Nachos

4 to 6 cups cubed peeled sweet potatoes
1 Tablespoon olive oil
⅓ cup salsa verde
1 (15 ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
2 cups prepared taco meat (optional)
½ to 1 cup salsa
2 cups shredded Mexican blend or cheddar cheese
to serve: tortilla chips, guacamole, sour cream and more salsa

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, toss sweet potato cubes with oil. Spread onto a rimmed baking sheet and roast until softened. For me, this took about 45 minutes and I stirred the potatoes every 15 minutes. Remove from oven and toss with salsa verde (using the same bowl didn't kill me). Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Spread potatoes across the bottom of an oven safe serving dish, or use the same rimmed sheet. Top with beans, taco meat--if desired--dollops plops of salsa (I typed dollops with a straight face but let's be real here, it's plopped on) and shredded cheese. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes until cheese is bubbly and everything has been heated through. Serve with chips, guacamole, sour cream and salsa.

Our game area.

This post is linked with What's Cookin' Wednesday