• Cooking Time: 45 min
• Servings: approximately 4 or 5
• Preparation Time: 20 min
• All ingredients below are organic:
• Sweet potato (1 large)
• Honey (1 TBSP)
• Cinnamon (dash to taste)
• White or brown rice (1 cup)
• Chicken stock (2 cups)
• Olive oil or butter (1 t)
• Cumin (1/2 t)
• Chili Powder (1/2 t)
• Salt (1/2 t)
• Diced onion (1/4 cup)
• tomato paste (3 T)
• whole black beans (1 16 oz can or prepared dried beans)
• cumin (1 t)
• grated medium cheddar cheese (3/4 c)
• whole milk plain yogurt or sour cream
• fresh salsa: (or if short on time use pre-made salsa)
• diced fresh tomato (1 c)
• diced onion (1 or 2 T)
• diced cilantro (2 T)
• fresh jalepeno pepper (1 t) (optional)
• salt to taste
• fresh flour tortillas - large

1. Peel and chop sweet potato into 1 in cubes. Boil in a pot of water until tender. Drain most of the water and mash with honey and cinnamon (if you are cooking for a family with a baby under age 1, before mashing with honey, set aside a few plain sweet potato cubes for baby). While sweet potato is boiling, put diced onion in pot with olive oil or butter and sautee until translucent. Add rice in pot with onion, add chicken stock, cumin, chili powder, salt and tomato paste. Stir ingredients together, bring to a boil, lower to simmer and let cook until rice is done (about 20 min or 45 min for brown rice). While rice and sweet potato are cooking heat beans in pot with cumin. Grate cheddar cheese. If making your own salsa, mix diced fresh tomato with onion, cilantro, jalapeño (if you want it spicy) and salt. Create an assembly line of each ingredient in it's own bowl- sweet potatoes, rice, beans, grated cheese, sour cream/yogurt, salsa and tortillas. Allow each person to assemble their burrito with the ratio of ingredients that they enjoy. The best way to assemble is to start with a vertical line of about 1/3 cup of the mashed sweet potato along the middle of the open tortilla. Next to it, add about the same amount of beans and rice, sprinkle about 2 T of cheddar cheese and allow to melt on hot ingredients, add a few dollops of sour cream and salsa. Fold top and bottom of tortilla over ingredients, then the right flap over. Hold the right flap and roll to create a burrito! Spoon extra salsa or yogurt/sour cream on to taste as you enjoy each bite.

In 2004, I moved to New York City from CA to be near my sisters. One of my sisters and I really missed the burritos we used to eat in CA, so we went to a "hole in the wall" mexican place and I ordered a burrito entree that had sweet potato in it. I really liked the sweet and savory flavors together as it was different than any other burrito I had ever had. I'll never forget the time I spent in New York. I was young a young adult - just a couple years out of college and being close to my sisters again was wonderful. The next year I moved to North Carolina for Graduate School and several months later began dating the most amazing man who later became my husband. We both again had in common our craving for mexican food, and after talking about our favorite unique eating experiences, I decided to get creative and make him my own version of the sweet potato burrito. I can't even remember the name of the place in New York that inspired me to make it (it was on the Upper East Side, and I tried to look it up online just now to see if I could find the original inspiration, but I couldn't find it), but my version of this recipe has become one of our favorite family meals. My husband and I have been married for 6 years and he now asks for me to make it every year on his birthday because he likes it so much. And every time I make it, it always reminds me of my sister and our time in New York together. My husband and I now have two children - a 3 year old and a 9 month old. This is a simple, yet wonderful family recipe that we all love, so I really enjoy being able to put it together quickly on a busy evening. Even our 9 month old baby can eat the sweet potatoes when we have it for dinner, and our 3 year old can decide which ingredients she wants in her burrito. I use all organic ingredients because I prefer to cook organic as much as possible. I am sure this recipe will stay in our family for a long time. This is the first time I have written it down and I am excited to pass it on to our girls when they get older.