You say Potato, she says Potawto and I say Patootie
By Ken Carpenter
November 13, 2010
This story could be known as a small penance for my sins of the past. Or it could just be another rotting pile of buffalo droppings. I don’t know which yet, I just started, but I do know it wasn’t my idea.
I woman made me do it.
For once, it was not my wife. A friend and co-worker who specialized in agonizing over trivial things recently spent almost a whole day fretting because she bought sweet potatoes instead of yams for her husband’s special recipe. She atoned for her worrying by bullying me into writing a story about the difference between yams and sweet potatoes.
“The world must know!” she cried. Whatever. And not that it is important, but the recipe came out fine.
For starters, it will be pointed out that in the local grocery stores, yams and sweet potatoes always sit next to each other and are rarely marked which is which. Sweet potatoes are skinnier, have a lighter skin and their flesh is a dry, pale yellow. Yams, or the fakers we end up with, are plumper, darker skinned and have moist orange flesh. Both have tapered ends, both are good, and both can be used in the other’s recipes. I prefer the orange meated ones but love them all.
And both are sweet potatoes. True yams are relatives of grasses and lilies and re not even distantly related to sweet potatoes. What we all know as yams are a Puerto Rican variety of sweet potato shipped mostly from Arkansas.
The true yam is a tuber of a tropical vine and while there about 600 species only 150 are used for food. Some varieties are poisonous unless peeled before they are cooked.
On the Pacific Island of Ponape, yams are referred to as 2-man, 4-man, or 6-man yams, depending on how many men it takes to lift them. They can grow up to six feet in length and weigh up to 600 pounds.
No word on whether one of these prompted Popeye to say, “I yam what I yam!”
The annual world production of yams is over 30 million tons. That’s a lot of lifting.
Sweet potatoes are a North American native and are one of the most nutritious foods in the world. They were the main nourishment for early American homesteaders and are now the world’s 6th principal food crop. 90% of the world’s crop is grown in Asia, and that is staggering since the USA produces 1.8 billion pounds per year. They have been growing in South America for thousands of years too, so anyway you cut it “There’s a pile of taters out there!”
The Tater Day Festival has been held in Benton, Kentucky annually since 1843. It lasts three days and is one of the few salutes to this valuable tuber. My mouth waters to think of all the pies that must be there. Pies rule.
For those who love pumpkin pie, I encourage you to try a Sweet Patootie, I mean sweet potato pie. Actually, I like Sweet Patootie better and will use it from this day forth, and you can’t make me stop, so there. It’s delicious no matter what you call it, so “You say potato and I’ll say patootie.”
For those wrinkling their nose at patootie pie, blame the woman who made me write this dry piece of drivel. If she were not an agonizer the subject would have never come up.
But I promise not to say patootie one more time this week, if someone gives me a pie!