Sweet Potatoes
Ah, Sweet Potatoes...usually just a vehicle to eat marshmallows at Thanksgiving, our Sweet Potatoes are actually sweet without marshmallows. House in the Woods Farm sweet potatoes are the sweetest, no added sugar required! How do we do it? Excellent soil conditions, effectively curing them after picking, and growing an heirloom variety. These sweet potatoes aren’t ordinary sweets. They are an heirloom variety, bred for its flavor. They have a thinner skin than standard varieties. This makes them more difficult to process and wash on a wholesale level, but they are the sweetest sweets around.
To learn more about what it takes to sweeten the sweets, read my blog post about curing sweet potatoes.
3 Favorite Sweet Potato Recipes
Baked Sweet Potatoes. Scrub sweet potatoes and spike a couple holes in them with a knife. Bake at 350 degrees until soft through the middle. Add butter. Eat the skins too, they are very nutritious!
Sweet Potato Fries. Slice sweet potatoes into French fry strips (little skinny ones can be cut in half or quarters long-wise), toss in a bowl with spices (thyme, sage, pepper) and just a little olive oil (just to coat), bake on a cookie sheet at 410 degrees for about 40 minutes, til soft inside.
Sweet Potato Minestrone Soup. Peel and cut sweet potatoes into cubes and toss them into a pot of minestrone soup, simmer for 20 minutes or so until potatoes are soft. Sweet potatoes add a great unique dimension to any tomato-base minestrone. Here is my favorite sweet potato minestrone recipe, the Moosewood Restaurant’s Winter Minestrone.
Sweet Potato Digging
Digging sweet potatoes is like treasure hunting and fun for all ages. We will try to have some digging available on some CSA pickup days over the next few weeks, so you have a chance to participate. It’s a great way to learn how your food is grown. Maybe you’ve been observing the sweet potatoes growing all season long, as the swatches of sweet potato plants called “slips” became a sea of vines. Some of you even helped plant the sweet potato “slips” in June! Maybe you’ve been eating the leaves like spinach these past couple weeks. Time to give it a try! Here is your chance to bring it full circle and help with the harvest of the sweets. For years, we have hosted a Sweet Potato Dig in the fall, open to the community. We collect up hundreds of pounds of sweet potatoes that Phil brings to the surface with the tractor. These digs often include a bonfire, sometimes music, sometimes a potluck, and making sweet potato fries or roasted sweet potatoes in the bonfire. I have not made a plan for this year due to COVID, but it could be done with a smaller group, as it is outside and easily social distanced.
