I love a falafel. I love a sweet potato. When I found the My New Roots recipe for Sweet Sweet Potato Falafels a couple of years ago, it was a good day. And eating these unusual and tasty falafel balls in salads allows me to enjoy the lettuce, brussels sprouts, AND the carrots from the CSA bounty at the same time!

Planning!

Once I decided to pack the falafel balls in salads, I also decided to quarter the accompanying "tahini sauce" recipe and make it thin enough to serve as salad dressing. I've had it before, and it's a lovely alternative to traditional vinaigrettes. It really does go great with the sweet potato falafel. I left the raw garlic out of the dressing (but left the garlic that would cook in the falafel balls) because I'm bringing these salads to enjoy at work, and nobody needs my garlic breath in their workspace.

Here's the nutritional breakdown from Fitbit...

Groceries I had on hand...

• lettuce
• brussels sprouts
• carrots
• fresh parsley
• olive oil
• sweet potatoes
• garlic
• ground coriander
• ground cumin
• chickpea flour
• sesame seeds
• salt
• pepper
• tahini
• ground cumin

Groceries I had to buy...

• fresh cilantro ($1.99)
• 2 lemons (3 for $1.99 = $1.33)

Total monies spent for the entire recipe: $3.32

Total monies spent for each of these 4 meals....

$0.83 per meal.

Cooking!

These salads have a handful of components: the lettuce, carrots, parsley (which I have been keeping fresh in the fridge since last week) are all chopped and raw. The brussels sprouts, I trimmed and roasted whole with a little bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper. There's also the tahini dressing, and the falafel balls themselves, which take the most time.

First, the salads. When I'm packing a salad to bring to work, I like to portion first, then toss the salads separately for each individual container.

The dressing couldn't be simpler: I shook up 1/4 cup tahini with 1/8 cup lemon juice and 1/2 cup water plus a little bit of cumin and salt, then divided evenly between four small containers for storage/travel.

And at last, the sweet potato falafel balls. I roasted all the sweet potatoes from the CSA together in the oven, then weighed out the half for this recipe and assembled the falafel mix per the recipe. It chilled in the fridge for an hour (also per the recipe), then I portioned out some balls, sprinkled the sesame seeds on top, and into the oven they went. I baked them for 25 minutes to ensure they were nice and firm.

Onto the salads they went, and then into the fridge!