Sweet Taters

The latest addition to my garden are sweet taters.  This hardy and super-nutritious root crop has always been a standard on the mountain.  I wanted to share my love for the root and took to the internet to find some history on it.  I have read in the past that sweet potatoes were introduced to the southern United States by African slaves – we have these good folks to thank for many of our delicious foods, you know.  The more I read, the more confused I became.

I read an article here that made a great point that slave trader wanted to protect their profits by delivering healthy men and women so they fed them foods they were accustomed to – including yams, okra and black-eyed peas.  So that isn’t too hard to understand how the leftover portions of those foods were planted in the US and soon enjoyed by all Americans.

I always kind of used Sweet Potatoes and Yams interchangeable.  It seems like yams are what you find in a can while sweet potatoes are sold fresh throughout the year (because they keeps so well).  While the canned yams are not as sweet, topped with marshmallows we eat them just fine. 

Well, it turns out that they are very different plants!  The Yams take 10 – 11 months to mature and they are a perennial, meaning you plant them once and enjoy them indefinitely!  It was yams that were native to Africa.  Yet, I’ve never seen a yam plant that I know of, and certainly never knew of anyone cultivating one.

The sweet potatoes that I know were actually native to South America where Christopher Columbus first enjoyed them and took them home to Spain.  By the 17th century, the exploring and conquering Spanish had spread sweet potatoes through Asia, Latin America and Africa.  So, the food brought from Africa could very easily  have been either yams or sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes are easy to grow, easy to keep over winter and very flexible to cook.  I grew up enjoying them fried, and now I love them about anyway I can get them.  I’ve been excited in recent years that sweet potato fries are more widely available in restaurants!  Whether it be mashed in a casserole, topped with marshmallows or baked with butter and cinnamon, I can eat sweet potatoes almost everyday.   Check back in the fall and I hope to show you an abundant harvest

More about Taters

Perhaps it’s our Scotts-Irish ancestry, but potatoes are more than a staple food on the mountain.  Most local folks would tell you that you can’t live without potatoes and the bounty of the fall potato harvest is the number one measure of the kind of winter we’re about to face.

I grew up with potatoes on the table every day, often more than once.  One friend who grew up in especially hard conditions remembered often having just potatoes for supper. 

Uppity people might sneer at our affinity for ‘taters, but they are popular across America as chips, fries, baked, a ’gratin… there are so many ways to enjoy them. 

We so universally refer to this food as ‘Arsh Taters that I have had to lookup the proper name for them.  It seems they are Russet or White potatoes; however, it also seems to me that people off the mountain don’t put Sweet Potatoes in the same class as White potatoes.  Certainly, their origins are vastly different.

Historically, white potatoes are thought to have first been cultivated in Peru, and sailors carried them to Ireland in the mid-1500’s.  Once the crop took root there, it became essential, History Magazine reports that “Many Irish survived on potatoes and milk alone – the two together provide all essential nutrients…” So it’s easy to see the devastation wrought by the Potato Blight that hit the island in 1845 and brought on mass starvation.

However, in those early days, potatoes were considered a food only for the lower classes of society.  Sweet Potatoes, however, once discovered in the South America, graced the tables of kings. 

In America, Sweet potatoes were most popular in the southern states, no doubt because they are more difficult to grow up north.  I’ve been reading that you have to cover and warm the soil in June in order to provide a suitable environment north of Kentucky.  However, they have grown in popularity across the country as their nutritional benefits have been exploited.

I adore sweet potatoes, simply baked or fried with a little brown sugar, they are delicious and as I mentioned very nutritious.

We have so much more access to foods these days, but if you see a garden plot on the mountain, you’ll just about always see a patch of potatoes among the other vegetables.