Sweetness!

It's that time of year when - if we're lucky - the weather starts cooling and we're interested in warmer and richer comfort foods like chicken and dumplings, gumbo, and sweet potato casserole.

Oh, sweet potato casserole! And sweet potato pie, and baked sweet potatoes with butter and brown sugar, and best of all: savory roasted sweet potatoes. (Recipe below.) Mmmm mmmmmmm!

So where to begin? Sure, you can pick them up at the store year-round, and the sweet potatoes will start appearing in south Louisiana farmers markets in the next few weeks, but you know where you should really begin: your own back yard.



In about May or so of this year, I planted nine Beauregard sweet potato slips in three containers. Two of the containers have little doors at the bottom, which was great for harvesting new potatoes in the spring, but I didn't even open them for the sweet potatoes.



I was supposed to wait until late September to harvest, but I was really curious, plus I could see a sweet potato peeking from the soil of one container. So of course I harvested that container right at the beginning of September. The last one will wait until October, but I did the second one today.

To begin, I dumped the container over onto a large plastic garbage bag (to make clean-up that much easier!).



Then I simply sifted through the soil, picking out potatoes and placing the soil back into a container. While sorting through, I came across the longest, weirdest looking sweet potato ever!



But I kept going. There wasn't much worth photographing in this container, but I have a few. Once they are dry, they will keep for a while, though I will likely roast them with olive oil and coarse salt soon!



And what to do with the container and all that soil? Start more plants, of course! These are broccoli, but I am using the other sweet potato container for carrots. YUM!





ROASTED SWEET POTATOES

sweet potatoes (as many or as few as you like)
olive oil
coarse salt

Wash and peel sweet potatoes. Cut into chunks no bigger than 1".
Toss with a scant bit of olive oil, but enough to very lightly coat potatoes. Sprinkle with a little salt; keep in mind that these potatoes will be sweet, and the salt should complement the sugars but not overwhelm them.
Roast at 400* F for about 25 - 35 minutes, or until fork tender.
Serve warm.