Friday, April 16, 2004

sweet potatoes

I decided to go public about my relationship with a very special vegetable.

The sweet potato is the most under-appreciated food in America.  I have been used to seeing it (but not eating it) once a year at thanksgiving like most Americans, but that's all changed now.  This change is mostly due to Sweet potato and peanut stew.

I didn't know this, but it is the sixth most important staple crop in the world. 

I went to Cub to buy some last night.  I wanted an example of an orange sweet potato (we call them yams) and a white one and a true yam.  I couldn't convince the grocer that orange sweet potatoes were not really yams.  He was depressingly uninterested in learning about true yams.  He just kept pointing over to the orange sweet potatos.  True yams are starchy tubers grown in Africa and Asia that can grow to 600 pounds.  They are called 2-man yams, 4-man yams, or 6 man yams according to how many people it takes to carry them.  The first steriods were made from yams.

In the southern united states, we feed sweet potatoes to livestock.  Here in the north, we just eat them ourselves.  People are beginning to realize that they make great potato chips, candy and cookies. 

They are great nutritionally. Almost no fat, loads of vitamins.  Medium glycemic index.  (glycemic index measures how fast the carbohydrates in a food get converted to glucose)  This puts it better carb-wise than white rice and regular potatoes but not as good as whole wheat pasta and black beans.

Sweet Potatoes have enemies.  The sweet potato weevil can really wipe out a sweet potato crop if the conditions are right.  The sweet potato has almost no resistance to these bugs. 

However, the genetic engineers are working on pasting genes into sweet potatoes that make the plant resistant to the weevil and certain viruses that attack the plant.

In your developing relationship with this special vegetable, you will find yourself daydreaming about uses for sweet potatoes.  Pancakes?  Ice Cream? Hot Cereal?  You may want to check out the tater day festival in Benton, Kentucky which is a three day homage to the sweet potato.  I know I am. 


6:29:25 AM    comment []