Wild Parrots and Sweet Potato Hash for One

The wild parrots were not part of the meal I promise :) The other night Ty and I were out on a walk when we heard this really loud squawking coming from overhead. We looked up, and there was a parrot! At first we thought, oh my gosh someone's pet bird got loose! There is a guy that we've seen walking around PB with a bird, just like he's out walking the dog. So we're looking at this bright green parrot, squawking away in this tree when we hear more of them that must've been hiding in the next tree. Being the nature nerd that I am, I whip out my phone and start Googling 'wild birds of California' and there you go:

Source: http://www.amazornia.com

There are wild parrots here in Southern California! They aren't terribly common I don't think, once the group we were looking at started getting louder, a lot of people came out to see what was going on. One woman said that they migrate up the coast from Mexico, but I needed to do a little research of my own. I'm now obsessed with The California Parrot Project which says that actually, "parrots are an increasingly familiar sight in many urban areas in the southern United States, having become established from escaped or released birds that were imported for the pet trade." I really don't care for birds as pets, but I do think birds in the wild are totally interesting to watch. The next day after our first parrot siting, the flock of about 8 of them were flying right over our head on our balcony! It's so cute, they fly in pairs like little love birds :)

This guy had his back to us but he looked very similar to the picture above.

Ok, on to the food! It's only been in the past year or two that I've started liking sweet potatoes. I think it's because growing up, the only form sweet potatoes came in that I knew of was smothered in marshmallows and maple syrup. I love sweet stuff, but that was never my thing. I've discovered that I do like sweet potatoes in savory form though. Since they can take a long time to cook and we don't have a microwave, dicing them up into smaller pieces and sauteing them in a pan seemed like the easiest thing to do. Ty is not really a fan of sweet potatoes so I only made 1/2 a potato at a time and it was still more than I could eat in one sitting!

We're trying to incorporate more vegetables into our meals and one thing I'm finding is that you can pretty much throw a handful of spinach into anything you're making in a pan, so that's what I did here. It cooks down so much that you don't even notice it, and there you go - you're eating veggies!

Sweet Potato Hash for One

1/2 sweet potato, diced (I stuck the other 1/2 in a Tupperware for later)
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
1-2 tablespoons diced onions
1 cup or a handful of fresh spinach

Saute the onions first because they seem to take the longest to cook. After about 5 minutes, throw in the mushrooms and diced sweet potatoes. To speed up the process even more, I put a lid on the pan at this point to steam the potatoes a little bit. After 4-5 minutes, take off the lid and flip everything around a few times with a spatula. Test a piece of potato to see if it's pretty soft, you may want to put the lid back on depending on how big you cut up the pieces. Once the potatoes are soft, toss in the spinach and keep flipping everything around in that pan until the potatoes start to brown and the spinach wilts down. Rhymes in this kitchen :)

I ended up eating most of this for breakfast and then later putting the rest of it on top of a salad. So good! I love breakfast and will eat pretty much anything with eggs, but this was a special treat.

Do you like sweet potatoes? What's your favorite way to cook them?

Did you know we had wild parrots in the US? Being from the east coast I knew about the Carolina Parakeet which is extinct now, but that's it. I don't know why I find this so interesting :)