Gettin' Crunk... Also, Beer Battered Sweet Potato Rounds

So today was pretty awesome.

I've been looking forward to today for awhile, once I found out that Bianca Phillips of Vegan Crunk was going to be in town, signing copies of her cookbook, Cookin' Crunk: Eatin' Vegan in the Dirty South.  That was the very first cookbook I bought upon making "the switch," and I've already made several recipes from it.

She had samples of her yummy recipe for vegan pimento cheese sandwiches.  They were quite good...  This is even coming from someone who never liked traditional pimento cheese at all.  Score!

Since I'm a camera nerd, I got a pic of some of the cool people hanging out this afternoon.  :)

By the time I got home, the little sammy snacks were wearing off, and I realized I needed actual noms.  My friend Jami has awesome timing; she chose that moment to post a recipe for beer battered sweet potato chunks.  Oh, hello.  I just bought some sweet potatoes yesterday!

I got to work.  I adapted the recipe from here.  Mostly because the chili powder was alllll the way at the back of the spices, and I didn't feel like climbing for it.  So I used curry powder instead.  I also used black pepper instead of black powder, because I didn't know if it was a typo, or if I had a pantry that was lacking.  I also opted for pretty little rounds instead of chunks.  Beer battered sweet potato chips?  Who knows?

No matter!  They fried up, all bubbly and yummy-like.  Hoegaarden makes for some awesome beer batter.   I added a couple of beer battered pickles to the mix at the very end, just because I was feeling feisty.  

All in all, it was a good day.  I bought a mess of collard greens at the store yesterday.  That might be my next experiment.  I've never had them before, so...  We shall see!