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Recipe Review: Chicken & Sweet Potato Stew

Another one of my goals for this year is to use my crockpot more often. This not only saves time, but it also saves money! A couple of weeks ago, Aldi had chicken breasts on sale for $1.49/lb (and I think they are on sale again this week starting tomorrow for the same price). I decided to take advantage of the sale and throw a bunch of crockpot meals into the freezer.

Last night, we tried out Stockpiling Moms' Chicken & Sweet Potato Stew. I was a little nervous about this recipe since my husband isn't a huge fan of sweet potatoes. However, since we had a bunch of sweet potatoes on hand before I made JoJo's first batch of baby food, I decided I would give it a try. Since the recipe didn't seem to be overloaded with sweet potatoes, I thought it might have a fighting chance.

Now, the prep for this meal was super easy, especially since I prepared several freezer meals all at once. I labeled my ziploc freezer bag with the name of the recipe and noted that an extra cup of chicken broth would need to be added when it comes time to cook.

Although it is suggested to serve this meal over rice, I forgot to include this note on my freezer bag. I decided to make fresh bread in my breadmaker to go along with it, which turned out to be just fine. I may try serving it over rice next time just to see if we like it better.

However, I made the mistake of adding 1/4 cup dried basil instead of fresh basil! Oops!!! I realized my mistake right after dumping the basil in my freezer bag. Although I did my best to remove as much as I could, it still had a pretty strong basil presence. Thankfully, it was still tasty!

The best news of all: my husband didn't even notice the sweet potatoes! Of course, I had to make a confession after dinner, only after I had verified a couple of different times that he really thought the recipe would be a keeper. So, I guess JoJo isn't the only sweet potato convert in our house now. :)

Sweet (Potato) Success

Johanna has started eating solids and her doctor recommended starting with sweet potatoes first. Although she wasn't quite sure what to think of them at first, she has quickly grown fond of them.

While I was pregnant, I had decided that I wanted to try to make our baby food from scratch. Last week, I finally took the plunge and made our little JoJo some sweet potatoes (thanks to my phone tutorial with Jana as well as her post at Granted Grace)!

I was most excited to find that the process was very simple and not nearly as time-intensive as I thought it might be:

1) wash and scrub the sweet potatoes
2) place on the stove in a nice big pot of water (the best part: no need to remove the skin!); boil, then simmer until fork tender
3) allow to cool (do not discard the water the veggies were boiled in)
4) slide skin off and place the veggies in a bowl with tall sides
5) put your immersion blender to work and add boiled water as needed to achieve desired consistency
6) place in ice cube trays & freeze for 24 hours
7) remove from trays and place in Ziploc bags labeled with the date and contents

To dethaw: place cubes in the microwave and defrost for 2 minutes (may need to repeat this once or twice, depending on how many cubes you have)


Five pounds of sweet potatoes and seven ice cube trays later, we are now stocked up!