Hi Jena --

Hmmmm. Fat free and milk free is a challenge... I guess what I would do is fairly different from your more traditional sweet potatoes with marshmallows... But would still be good...

I would bake the sweet potatoes until nice and soft, and roast / bake some garlic along side them. Then I'd mash the sweet potatoes with some of the roasted garlic, chicken broth to loosen the consistency, and some minced chipotle chiles. Sweet potatoes go great with the heat of the chipotles...

Good luck, and hope your surgery goes smoothly!!
Emily

I know the feeling, I had gb surgery after suffering for 8 yrs. But I could eat the sweet potatoes. Cook them, peel them, slice them, add sliced apples, orange juice, brown sugar and a little maple syrup. Bake...delicious and it will keep you from getting an attack! Been there, done that, many ruined holidays. My advice, get it out, you will feel so much better! And not have to worry when you eat out or at a friend's about HOW they prepared it!

There is no fat in marshmallows...
However I would bake about 3 pounds of sweets, scoop out of the skin, add "some"....about 2 Tablespoons ( that's not much in 3 pounds of potatoes!) margerine ( you said no dairy!) and about 3 Tablespoons of frozen orange juice concentrate, the grated rind of one lemon...salt to taste....and then put into an 8 inch suqare baking dish and drizzle with honey and bake....perhaps top with a bit of chopped pecans.
If you really need to you could omit the margerine.
Linda C

This is a family favorite for holidays!

Baked Sweet Potatoes with maple-jalapeno sour cream

Rub oil and salt on 4 scrubbed, sweet potatoes and dried
Place on rack and take 450 for 40-45 minuts or until soft (I wrap mine in foil)

Topping
Combine
1/2 c sour cream
1 Tbl maple syrup
2 tsp seeded and minced jalapeno ***I use canned minced green chiles, drained
1 tsp lime juice
salt and tobasco to taste
chill

Serve potatoes with:
maple-jalapeno sour cream
bacon bits
sliced scallions

It's actually the butter/margarine in the topping of our traditional recipe that I'm trying to avoid this year, and sadly, nuts are out too. I'm thankful that this is just a short-term extreme-lowfat diet, I couldn't do this forever. I'd really like it to be fat free, as I will already be getting some fat from all the other dishes - they'll be low-fat too, but I have to look at my cumulative fat intake.

My plan for Thanksgiving day:
- small amount of turkey breast
- small amount of dressing (98% fat free broth, small amount of butter to saute the veggies, trying to reduce the oil in the cornbread)
- skipping the mashed potatoes and gravy. I could make fat free mashed potatoes, but I don't feel right imposing my diet on 5 other people and they aren't that important to me.
- green bean casserole. Made using 98% fat free cream soup and putting the fried onions on the side for others to have.
- fruit salad
- sweet potatoes...

Kathleen, that sounds good - any ideas on amounts? I wonder how it'd taste with cranberries added?

I don't think it will matter..the amts. One apple for every 2 or 3 potatoes. You want enough juice so they can cook in it. I can work it out for you, but I am sure you can do it! No matter how you do it it will taste good. And NO margarine or butter or nuts, they have fat.. You will def have an attack if you use that! I have never used cranberries. You could try a little dish and see how you like it before you do the whole recipe.
and good luck with your surgery....I am going to email you if you have an addy listed

I'm not sure if there is a way of making fat free cornbread but I may be able to offer some suggestions on other things...

Two words, Butter Buds... You get the buttery taste and none of the fat... You mix it with boiling water to form a liquid....

You could 'fry' the veggies with a little Butter Buds... For the sweet potatoes use BB and brown sugar.... For the gravy just remove the fat from the turkey broth... ( I pour it into a measuring cup and use a baster to suck just the broth from the bottom of the cup and use corn starch to thicken)... For the mashed potatoes use powdered skim milk ( you can add as much as you want for really rich mashed potatoes ) and BB... ( I use them in the dry form and use some of the water I boiled the potatoes in. )... I know that won't help your Mother but the rest of the family won't know the difference and you'll still be able to have them...

I don't think the BB will work for your Berry Mallow Yam Bake though because they use the butter for a crust...

Oh, it does contain salt so what ever you use it for make sure you taste it before adding any additional salt...

Hope some of that helps... Good luck with the operation.

Rita

Just what I was thinking. I always use butter buds in my sweet potatoes, nobody notices! And for the topping, just leave some without the topping for yourself. I always make some sweet potato casserole with streusel topping and some without because there are always people who are watching their weight.

glenda's Sweet Potatoes w/ maple jalapeño sour cream is now our favorite anytime sweet potato recipe! Cheated and cooked them in mircowave the other night - chilled topping for only about 10 mins & it was still delicious!!!
Thanks again - glenda -(DH commented again he wants to try it on regular baked Potato! so will try it and let you know)

Won't sauting the veggies in EVOO be better than butter? Use applesauce to replace all or most of the "fat" in the cornbread. I also like to use plain yogurt or sour cream for "oil". You could do a combo of fat free sourcream and unsweetened applesauce. The best fat free Sourcream is the one that has a black and white "cow" pattern on the tub.
Or to cut the fat out of the sauted veggies, use a bit of fat free, lowfat chicken broth.
Same for the mashed potatoes and gravy. Chicken broth is your friend. And if you fridge chicken broth (in the can) you can scoop out the "Fat" ball.

I don't measure for either of these, but due to an extreme dislike of marshmallows among my relatives, I make either of these:

Peel, then cube sweet potatoes to 1-inch. (You need a very sharp knife for this) Place in casarole dish with enough apple cider to just cover to which you've added 1/2 cup maple syrup. Add a couple of cinnamon sticks, some cloves, and nutmeg, dried cranberries or golden rasiens (or both). If you don't mind booze in a dish, add 1/3 cup boubon. Cover and bake until potatoes are soft. If you want to reduce the juice, uncover for the last 15 minutes of cooking.

The other uses crushed pineapple, brown sugar, cinnamon and ginger. Again I don't measure. I bake the dark red sweet potatoes until soft, then mash them with pineapple juice until smooth. Add crushed pineapple, cinnaomn, ginger and brown sugar to taste. The topping I usually use is coconut/brown sugar/butter or crushed macadamia nuts/brown sugar/butter. (Both of those are going to add fat, so you may want to just do have the top for those who want it and leave the other half bare for the rest of you.) Then bake it again until hot and the top browns.

Both of these are certainly more tasty with butter (what isn't?) but when we had to make them low-fat, the only comment that was made was that the bourbon didn't come through as much without the butter. That didn't stop them from eating all of it, I noticed.

Since you're used to using canned yams and the marshmallows on top, you might want to add more sugar than I would.

Sorry I can't be more precise. They are things I just do by rote.

Terri - true, evoo would be better than butter. I've made muffins using applesauce for the fat, I've never tried it with cornbread though. Luckily I still have time for a trial run. I'll have to try the cow print sour cream because the store brand I picked up has absolutely no flavor of its own (until I made it into dip, which made it a nice baked potato topper)

beanthere - those recipes sound great! I can't do alcohol either but the first one sounds like it'd be great without it.

Thanks so much to everyone for all the suggestions! Poor hubby is going to have sweet potatoes a couple times this week!

- Jena

Jenna, if you can't do the alcohol, maybe ditch the nutmeg and add a vanilla bean.

I like applesauce in cornbread..it sweetens and moistens it up..but it depends on what "kind" of cornbread you are after..I'm a "northerner", my hubby a "southerner"..we have two different ideas of cornbread. But since I do the cooking and the cleaning..he gets it how I like it. (more cake than bread) :o)

Plain mashed sweet potatoes with diced candied ginger mixed in is quite good - of course you could always add in butter and cream, but they're good just that way.

Here's a very simple suggestion. Roast the sweet potatoes in the oven on a large sheet pan in a single layer. First cut all the potatoes into eighths, toss in a small amount of olive oil (or spray with that olive oil flavored cooking spray to avoid oil altogether) chopped fresh rosemary and salt & pepper. you can add some red pepper flakes if you like the combo of sweet and spicy. Add a whole head of garlic if you like, either separated into cloves or wrapped in foil whole. The mashed potatoes can be made completely dairy free, I never add milk to mine. Just use some fat free broth, this could be veg. broth, chicken or turkey. Add some of that roasted garlic, salt and pepper and the potatoes will be wonderful. Most of the guests will drown the mashed potatoes in gravy anyway.

Ritaotay! I was gonna say Butter Buds! Gives you that butter flavor.