Baked Sweet Potato (0 Star)

I have expressed my love for sweet potatoes on this blog before (and my mock snobbery--it's obvious when I'm joking, right? Right?). This sweet potato love matured and deepened when I lived in Hawaii. It was there that I tried my first baked sweet potato. It was served to me by a family with about ten scrawny kids living in a tiny, humble home. It was a very small half of a sweet potato that had been grown in the family garden. I was blown away by the creamy, bright orange, buttery, sweetness. I devoured it and looked around hoping for more, but it was obvious that my small half was a generous offering.

Another family in Hawaii served me a sweet potato, the likes of which I had never known existed. It was a small, skinny tuber, about the diameter of a medium sized carrot. It had been peeled, boiled, sliced into discs and served with butter. The most amazing thing about it was the gorgeous purple color. The color reminded me of purple gumdrops. Again I was blown away by the buttery sweetness--and the color!



I dream about those Hawaiian sweet potatoes. I have even grown my own sweet potatoes, hoping to replicate them, but the results were worse than yams. (Were they yams? The catalog said "Georgia Jets" and called them sweet potatoes.) If you read this post, you know how I feel about yams.

Then, this week when I went shopping I noticed that the sweet potatoes looked a little different than the typical sweet potatoes that I've seen around here. The skin was a deep purple. Normally the sweet potato skin color is closer to the color of regular baking potatoes. With visions of my Hawaiian sweet potatoes, I immediately snatched up a half dozen or so. Eagerly, I went home and baked one up and took a bite. Ahhh, lovely, lovely sweet potato! It was obviously not the same kind as the ones that I had in Hawaii--the flesh was not purple or bright orange--but it's flavor did come closer than any other sweet potato I've had. (Or at least closer to my memory of them...that was kind of a long time ago, sad to say.) What a creamy, buttery, sweet dream.







If you want to try especially good sweet potatoes, go to Buy Low and get some right now! If you are not familiar with it, Buy Low is right next to Cafe Rio, and close to Olive Garden and Movies 8. And be sure the sign says "sweet potatoes" not "yams"!

To prepare a baked sweet potato, bake the same as you would a regular baked potato and slather with plenty of butter.