Sweet Potatoes are on the rise

Via Slashfood:

ConAgra Foods plans to build a sweet potato processing plant in Louisiana. Primarily, of course, to cut them into fry shapes, so that fast food restaurants in the US can offer sweet potato fries on their menus.

Sweet potatoes are one of today’s hottest food trends with per capita consumption up 21 percent in the past five years according to the USDA. A 2007 Technomic survey showed that 85 percent of the general population is favorably inclined toward sweet potatoes.

But where will you be able to find sweet potato fries? It is a mystery.

A spokeswoman for ConAgra declined to tell Slashfood which fast-food restaurants might be using their taters citing confidentiality agreements.

Keep an eye out for sweet potato fries to pop up on fast food chain menus on or after November 2010, when the facility is slated to be built.

State Fair of Texas

The State Fair of Texas is underway, and between the fried Oreos and fried butter (not joking), there are three sweet potato dishes to be found in the chaos.



Sweet Potato Fries, found at The Dock restaurant, located in the Embarcadero Building on Nimitz Dr.

Piping-hot sweet potato fries sprinkled with Lawry’s seasoned salt, covered in shredded cheddar cheese and broiled to perfection. Brown sugar and cayenne pepper are dusted on the fries followed by a topping of crumbled bacon. Served with a side of Ranch dipping sauce.

Fried Sweet Potato Pie, found at the following locations: Cottonbowl Plaza 2 (in front of the Lagoon); Front Gate 2 (near the Auto Show and the Exposition/Parry Avenue entrance); Tower Building 10 (in front of Cotton Bowl).

A generous portion of third-generation-recipe sweet potato pie filling is spread on a soft flour tortilla and lightly fried to a crisp. Served plain or with a light sprinkle of cinnamon and powdered sugar.

And finally without a photo...

Twisted Yam on a Stick (HINT: It is not actually yam, how hard is this??) Found at Front Gate 2 (near the Auto Show and the Exposition/Parry Avenue entrance)

A delicious, towering, spiral-cut sweet potato on a 13” skewer is fried to a delicate crispy texture, then gently rolled in butter and dusted with cinnamon and sugar.

1" buttons to spread the word!

Available for purchase on etsy! If they aren't in stock, send me a convo or leave a comment here and I'll restock them for you. What do you mean you have no use for 1" buttons with sweet potatoes on them?? That is un-American.

Japanese Sweet Potato

This is pretty uh... yeah. But it's a roasted sweet potato. When it gets chilly, vendors set up and roast them and sell them for you to enjoy plain. They were sweet and fairly moist but wow it was a lot of sweet potato to eat all by yourself.

Soupppp

Let's pretend I talked about why I've been MIA on this blog for so long. Now, moving right along!

I linked to, included on the flyer, and made the Creamy Sweet Potato Soup for Thanksgiving last year. As expected, the family (12 or so large) was up in arms about not having "candied yams" complete with marshmallows. They weren't happy about it... until they had this soup. I think most of them were humoring me, but man I'm telling you, they followed me back into the kitchen for seconds while I was finishing up all the cooking for the actual dinner.

Basically it was fantastic, just delicious. Don't wait for Thanksgiving to make it, but trust me that your relatives will get over the lack of sugary sweet potatoes and toasted marshmallow topping if you serve them this soup. It's going to be my new way of keeping them from bothering me about when the turkey's going to be done.

I HEART YAM

I can't tell if this is supposed to be an actual yam or if the slightly tapered ends denote a sweet potato but either way it is awesome.