These fruits and veggies can add to health, longevity and vitality

Hi, I'm Carol Slager, pharmacist, health coach, lifestyle blogger, and I write for the Northwest Indiana Times. When I think about fall, I always think about apples and squash and, of course, pumpkins. So today, I have a variety of some of the superfoods that tend to have a lot of nutrients, a lot of antioxidants because of their beautiful colors. For example, we have beta carotene in the carrots and the sweet potato and the squash. Here's one of these fun drinks you can make because it is the season of lattes and pumpkin. However, with a new twist, today we're going to use some baked sweet potatoes. So I'm going to make a spiced sweet potato latte. In here I have some cooked sweet potato. The best way to make it is to bake it and then mush it up and put it in your cup. I've got about a half a cup in here. Now to this, I'm going to add about a cup of milk. I'm using coconut milk. You could use almond. You could use dairy. Whatever your preference is, just pour that in there and then pumpkin pie spice, which I don't have, so I use a little bit of cinnamon and a little bit of nutmeg and a little bit of ginger. So if you had pumpkin pie spice, you'd probably want to use about a half a teaspoon, but that's always according to your taste as well. Then I'm going to add a little dash of maple syrup, a splash of vanilla. That'll do. You could add a pinch of salt if you like. Now I'm going to put on my lid and get the very loud ninja blender going. Okay, hold your ears. I blended that mixture together for about a minute until it looks smooth and creamy. Now I'm going to put it in the microwave to warm this up. So my sweet potato latte mixture is all foamy and smooth and it's warmed up. I'm going to use coffee today. Like I said, you don't have to add coffee, but I'm going to put in coffee for about half of it. Then I'm going to pour the latte mixture right on the top. It's kind of frothy, just like the baristas do it for you at the coffee shops. Now if you wanted to, you could add a little more cinnamon on the top or nutmeg, whatever. Here we have our spiced sweet potato latte.