Simple Savory Wild Rice Sweet Potato Patties - Rawmazing Raw and Cooked Vegan Recipes (2024)

Susan|February 2, 2016

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The midwest is hunkering down for a blizzard, the east is digging out from one and here in California, it is cold and rainy. A great time for these delicious, easy savory Sweet Potato Patties! This recipe is part of our cooked collection. Check out our cool recipe index to find all the recipes and search by type: Recipe Index

My mother cracks me up. Born and raised in Minnesota, she is almost as much of a winter lover as I am. Sweaters, sitting by the fire while the snow swirls around the house, it’s such a cozy feeling. But I must say, she just hasn’t wrapped her head around the fact that in the Bay Area, we actually do have winter.

“Did you enjoy dinner on the deck tonight?” she asks. “No, mom, there isn’t any furniture out there. It’s cold and rainy. It’s winter here.” She just laughs, thinking that our weather is like San Diego, 75 degrees year round.

We are being blessed with a cold, very rainy winter. It is so needed forCalifornia’s water starved land. Experiencing a historic drought up close is scary. Seeing reservoirsthat are practically empty, hearing daily about how the water table is dropping to an unprecedented level that may never recover is frightening. Especially since a great percentage of the fruits, nuts and vegetables that the country eats are grown here. Thankfully, El Nino has arrived and we have been getting inches and inches of rain. Which translates to many feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. When that snow melts, the reservoirs fill. It is a good thing.

But it is also a cold, wet thing and when it is cold and wet, I make more cooked food than raw. One of the problems I see with a raw diet is that when your body is needing more calories to stay warm, people tend to fill up on fats and nuts to try to stay raw. If you just add some super healthy, cooked food to the mix, you won’t crave all the fats to stay full.

I know that everyone doesn’t agree with me but I am bringing you what works for me after eating a mostly raw diet for over 8 years. In the summer, my percentage of raw increases dramatically. But in the winter, adding in some cooked food can be healthier than adding a ton of fat in the form of nuts and oils.

How I create recipes has been changing, evolving. I rarely use oil -this includes coconut oil- in my cooked or raw recipes. I don’t completely shy away from fats as I believe that nuts have wonderful health benefits. But I try to use them sparingly. If a recipe calls for a cup of cashews, it might seem like a lot. But many times, when you break it down to serving size, you are only getting a few nuts per serving. Well within the daily recommend allowance.

There are cooked foods that carry a wonderful nutritional profile. And in some cases, cooking the food releases nutrients that weren’t available when the food was raw. That is why I believe that a combination of cooked and raw gets you the biggest nutritional bang for your buck.

So, on this cold, rainy winter day, I am bringing you a simple recipe for sweet potato patties. You can actually make everything ahead of time, and assemble and bake when you need them. You can also freeze them after they have been baked for later use. My kind of recipe!

Sweet potatoes are the base, as I am trying to get a lot more of those in our diet. They are mixed with wild rice, onions and celery and some wonderful seasoning including sage. They are super happy sitting on top of a bed of simple sautéd spinach and garlic. Delicious!

This recipe makes 12, 5″ patties. You can cut the recipe in half or freeze the extras like I do.

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