Golden scalloped potatoes (and a yam) from scratch

I have been engaging in much more scratch cooking and baking to better control our diets. Less processed high-salt, high-fat foods. More real and fresh foods lower on the bad stuff but still enough to make it taste good. Tonight we had a roast chicken, some corn, a nice Chardonney, and this scalloped potatoes recipe which uses milk, potatoes, Parmesan cheese, and a yam (or sweet potato) for colour and flavour. It was pretty good but this was a lot of work. Perhaps too much. I have a few other recipes to try that seem a bit simpler. I opted for this one because I happened to have a lone yam which the recipe called for.

Tomorrow: Chili I made yesterday - half for Monday & Wednesday, half for the freezer for another time. I made cheesy biscuits on Friday. There are a few left so we'll eat them with the chili. Leftover chicken and scalloped potatoes on Tuesday. No dinner planning until Friday! Thursday, we are going to Swiss Chalet for dinner after my class - which should generate an interesting blip - we'll be popping in to our observatory on campus to look at the instruments and, weather permitting, some cool objects in the sky.