Please Pass the Potatoes
Sweet potatoes that is! Like winter squash, sweet potatoes are at their peak between November and December, even though you can find them in supermarkets all year round. Like white potatoes, sweet potatoes are root vegetables, but they can differ in size from short with round ends (like the white ones) or long and tubular with tapered ends.
Sweet potatoes have a thin skin and come in various colors, including brown, orange, red, and purple. The inside flesh is hard when raw, soft when roasted or baked, and is most often yellow or orange. Nutritionally, sweet potatoes are very good sources of the antioxidants vitamin C and beta-carotene, which your body uses to make vitamin A, manganese, and dietary fiber. Sweet potatoes are starchy vegetables that, similar to winter squash, should be counted as a starch on your plate. A medium baked sweet potato or 1/2 cup has about 100 calories, 24 g carbohydrates, 3 g fiber, 2 g protein, 0 g fat.
I love them roasted, baked, mashed, or even made into sweet potatoe fries! Just be sure not to confuse them with yams. In North America you will commonly see sweet potatoes marketed as yams, but don’t be fooled. Yams are native to Asia and Africa and have a firmer, whiter flesh than sweet potatoes.
How do you like your sweet potatoes?
I looooove sweet potatoes. I used to think I hated them because I never enjoyed them much at Thanksgiving (the only time a year we USED to eat them).
That all changed when I had sweet potato fries at a restaurant once and they were phenomenal! I made some at home just tossed in a little olive oil and spices and then baked. Delicious!
I’ll even pop them in the microwave and make a baked sweet potato for lunch sometimes. They are just soo good! 🙂