thursday

Tonight, a new twist on an old favorite. We've all had good old-fashioned potato pancakes: shredded potato, some onion, held together by a beaten egg or two, then pan-fried to a crisp golden brown. That's essentially what we made tonight, except instead of regular potatoes we used sweet potatoes.

You start by making a pancake-type batter of flour, eggs and milk, then add coarsely grated sweet potato, a thinly sliced onion, and a couple pinches of dried thyme. Have a bit of oil heating in a skillet, then add a scoop of the mixture and mash it down until it's formed into a suitable pancake. (You may have noticed this week that I don't have Sarah's patience for typing in recipes... you can find it here.)

We made some thicker ones that had a creamy, under-cooked center, and some flatter ones that had a nice crispiness; it's a matter of preference. I will say that for me, the sweet potato was a little much, even with the onions and a savory herb like thyme. However, I found a dash of hot sauce and some plain yogurt or sour cream balanced out the sweetness beautifully.

The subtext of this recipe in this week is whether you think the eggs void this meal's vegetarian credentials. I'm not sure there's a consensus on this. It's not vegan, certainly, but I think it's vegetarian. Sure, eggs are animal protein, but the fact that the eggs we eat are generally unfertilized puts them, in my mind, into a similar category to milk and cheese. I think fish, which many "vegetarians" also eat, is much more of a gray area. I suppose it all comes down to why you're a vegetarian, or broadly what you hope to gain by vegetarianism. Thoughts?