There is nothing Weekender likes better than a great potato, which we believe we have already talked about in these august pages of munificence.
But if there was something we liked equally to a great potato, it would indubitably be the sweet potato. This magnificent foodstuff is equally good as a savoury side or in a sweety-pie and it’s that kind of splendid breadth of usage that makes us salivate with pleasure. Indeed, once we made a sweet potato patty, which went niftily with a pork burger, three tomato slices, a load of lettuce and a frankly inadequate bun struggling to keep up. After dislocating our jaw to try and take a bite we decided to use a knife and fork instead, which made it much easier but we felt a bit stupid doing it.
So in absolutely humbled glee we experienced multifarious spurts of spiffingosity when we found out that November is officially Sweet Potato Awareness Month.
All hail this majestic invention! We praise and eat you, o sugary spud! Yam is yum!
In honour of this beautiful beast, here are some mostly-true facts we researched extensively at 4.21pm in order to look busy one afternoon at work.
The sweet potato is the 6th principal world food crop and approximately 90 per cent of the world’s crop is grown in Asia.
Vardaman, Mississippi, claims to be the Sweet Potato Capital of the World.
Similarly, Weekender claims to be the Entertainment Story Capital of the Caribbean. See, easy innit?
William Shatner can eat seven sweet potatoes in one sitting, if they are quite small.
Sweet potatoes were grown in Peru as early as 750 BCE.
Native Americans were growing sweet potatoes when Columbus arrived in 1492.
George Washington grew sweet potatoes on his farm at Mount Vernon, Virginia.
African slaves in the South called the sweet potato “nyami” because it reminded them of the starchy, edible tuber of that name that grew in their homeland. The Senegalese word “nyami” was eventually shortened to the word “yam”.
Sweet potatoes contain an enzyme that converts most of its starches into sugars as the potato matures. This sweetness continues to increase during storage and when they are cooked.
When he gets angry, Man United boss Alex Ferguson’s face goes the exact same colour as the polished skin of an American sweet potato.
Japan makes a distilled beverage from barley, sweet potatoes and rice. It’s called Shochu and looks boss. Japan is cool.
That patty we mentioned also had fried onions involved somewhere but we forgot to say so before.
The Tater Day Festival, one of the few festivals devoted to sweet potatoes, is held in Benton, Kentucky annually.
The Sweet-Mashed Potato is a dance invented by William Shatner after getting mad and dropping seven sweet potatoes on the floor, where they smashed. His neighbour, Sting, saw the resultant tantrum through the kitchen window and immediately improvised complex counter-moves on the spot, before going home and doing sex wrong.
One baked sweet potato (3 1/2 ounce serving) provides over 8,800 IU of vitamin A or about twice the recommended daily allowance. The vegetable provides 42 per cent of the Recommended Daily Allowance for vitamin C, 6 per cent of the RDA for calcium, 10 per cent of the RDA for iron, and 8 per cent of the RDA for thiamine for healthy adults. It is low in sodium and is a good source of fibre and other important vitamins and minerals. A complex carbohydrate food source, it provides beta carotene which may be a factor in reducing the risk of certain cancers.
“Oh sweet potato, I love you because you’re an idiot. You make me feel like a genius.” – Lady Rainicorn
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