Juicing With No Juicer and Smoky Sweet Potato Cheese Sauce

Today is day three of my two week potato diet. I feel great and so far I've had some delicious food! I still have some ideas floating around in my head too. I think my intense need to not get bored with food but also stick to my plan have opened the doors of creativity.
I've also been having green juices and smoothies. I'm trying to flood my body with nutrients so I am at my best mentally and physically.

This juice has the usual spinach, orange and carrot but I also added some fresh parsley which mae it taste so fresh and zippy! It tasted like spring in a glass!
I wanted to mention that I don't have a juicer. I had one many moons ago and I remember that it was a huge pain to clean and honestly it made me not want to use it very often because of the mess. I just use my blender and a mesh strainer. Here is my very complicated set up!

I gently push down on the pulp in the strainer to get as much juice as possible. The strainer is super easy to rinse and wash. I'm sure juice purists or raw foodists would say you have to have some kind of fancy contraption to extract the right nutrients at the right temperature or whatever, but for me this works fine.

I made this smoky sweet potato cheese sauce yesterday that turned out amazing! Better than I expected. I actually wrote own what I did just in case it worked.

                                                    Smoky Sweet Potato Cheese Sauce

• 1 Med. Lg. Sweet Potato Peeled and chunked
• 1 Small Russet Potato Peeled and chunked
• 1/2 Onion Chopped 
• 3 Cloves Garlic
• 1/2 Tsp. Salt
• 1/2 Tsp. Black Pepper
• 1/4 C. Nutritional Yeast
• 1 1/2 Tsp. Liquid Smoke
• 1/2 Tsp. Smoke Paprika
• 1 C. Cooking water from Potatoes
• 2 Heaping T. Tahini

Wrap your onions and garlic cloves in foil and roast in the oven at 350 fahrenheit for about forty five minutes. When these are close to being done you can boil your potatoes. You want to boil them until very soft. I went about twenty five minutes. Before you drain the potatoes reserve some of the cooking water. I used one cup, but reserve a little extra just in case you need more. Throw the drained potatoes, the roasted onion and garlic, salt, pepper, smoked paprika, liquid smoke, nutritional yeast, tahini and 3/4 C. of the cooking water in a blender or food processor.  Blend until smooth and as thick or thin as you desire.

I used my sauce to make Au gratin potatoes. It was creamy an cheese-y an made with all potatoes! The cheese sauce is rich and smoky. The next time I make it, I might make it thicker so it's more of a cheese spread. And when I make the potatoes again, I might make the dish even richer by adding some daiya or FYH smoked Gouda between the layers.

Roxy and Joan like to "help" me when I cook. When I get to the point where I really don't need the help, I let them down easy by finding some birds for cats videos on YouTube to distract them!