Sorry to bombard our loyal readers with more posts about my cooking, I’ll try to keep this one short. Over Thanksgiving, our family made a sweet potato dish that was so simple, yet so tasty, even 80P couldn’t screw it up.

I’ve never had a penchant for the orange potato quite like some have. I didn’t obsess over a restaurant that makes fries with them, or drool all over a steaming hot sweet baked potato. I knew plenty of you people, I just wasn’t one of you. They were just fine in my book, but I would have rather found my starch the old fashioned way. But having made this dish twice, I can now say that I too crave sweet potato. I have a small window into the minds of you crazy people, if only for a brief instance.

This dish is not meant to be a main course, nor does it allow you to show off your cooking talents to your date. It’s not going to shock your taste buds and make the next sip of wine taste like Hi-C. This dish will never fail you though, it’s like an old standby you can prepare without thinking, while concentrating on the small pheasant burning in your oven.

So here’s my favorite side dish — once again, I don’t really have a recipe with portions, but this dish especially should just be made by feel.

80 P’s Mindless Baked Sweet Potato

First wash and skin sweet potatoes. Then chop them into roughly inch by inch pieces. I try to make mine bite-size and relatively uniform — better for cooking. The larger the pieces, the more cooking time required, so keep that in mind. Mince a clove of garlic. In a bowl, toss the cut potatoes with olive oil, garlic, fresh rosemary, salt and pepper. Then place the pieces on a cooking sheet or Pyrex, but ensure that all have room to lay flat on the bottom. Cook at 350 for about 20 mins. The sweet potato should be done when you can poke them with a fork with ease.

That’s it. Add some more salt and pepper if you want, but they should be hot and ready to serve.