Rich orange autumnal color? Check. Complete protein? Check. Set-it-and-forget-it-esque weeknight dinner? Check.

Carlos planted the seed of this vegetarian delight in my mental recipe book last weekend, and I was quick to try my hand at recreating it! The only regret of this is I made waaaaaaay more than I could eat between cooking ’em on Tuesday & scooting away to the most Magical Place on Earth Thursday night. All you need is this short list of ingredients:

Sweet potatoes (I found itsy-bitsy baby potatoes at Capital Supermarket, and baked way too many)

1 container of nonfat greek yogurt

1 lime

2 cans of black beans (drained)

1 can of corn (drained)

your favorite mix of yummy spices! I did a to-taste mix of cumin, healthy amounts of salt, & pepper

queso fresco at whatever quantities you fancy!

avocado for garnish

Coat your potatoes with a nice olive oil rub, wrap them in aluminum foil, and pop ’em in the oven at 400. Take the hour they’ll take to bake and treat yo’self to some R&R (I did an embarrassing little circuit workout on a yoga mat in my living room). Once your potatoes are soft to a poke, pop ’em out of the oven, and brace your hands for a literal game of hot potato. This HungryTexan is neither patient enough to wait for said potatoes to cool or been cooking for as many years as many Southern grandmothers who can pickup a hot baked potato without flenching. I unwrapped my potatoes, sliced them in half (hot-dog-style), and proceeded to wince in pain from the extreme potato heat as I did my best to scoop each potato’s contents into a big bowl while doing my best not to completely mangle the delicate skins (note: some potato skins were harmed beyond repair in the making of this dish).

Once you’ve scooped all your taters into a big bowl, dump in the greek yogurt, and squeeze that lime (faux-sour cream: ‘das it, ‘das it). Mix it all together, add your spices to taste, and then dump in your drained black beans and corn to the mix. Here’s where I started nibbling (such a yummy flavor combo!).

Scoop your mix into each potato skin (don’t worry, your potato shouldn’t runneth over, so load ’em up high!). Sprinkle your desired amount of queso fresco. Pop ’em back in the oven (still at 400 — so convenient!) and bake ’em for another 15-20 minutes or until they seem sufficiently “twice-baked”.

Slice an avocado on top and badabing, there you have a full-protein, complex-carb meal. Also worth noting, since I admittedly made waaaaaay too many of these little guys for just one HungryTexan — I took them to work for lunch and they were good as new with a one minute zap. Also…spoiler alert and a preview of coming attractions: since I had so much potato mix leftover, I made some potato patties and popped ’em in the freezer. I’m going to try pan-frying some latke-esque sweet potato/southwestern pancakes next week!