By Carolyn Twesten, Weaver Street Market Produce Merchandiser
This week’s owner coupon is a free three-pound bag of organic, North Carolina sweet potatoes with a $20 produce purchase. And, owners get 25 percent off Plainville antibiotic-free fresh whole turkeys. Learn more about the coupon below.
Sweet potato, the official state vegetable of North Carolina, we salute you. Nutritious, easy to grow (unless you have a pack of sweet-potato eating deer in your garden like I do), and most of all delicious, there is a lot to shout about sweet potatoes. They were proposed as the state vegetable in 1993 by a group of school children in Wilson, NC (one of the top sweet potato growing regions), beating out both collards and corn.
Some people, though, STILL refer to sweet potatoes as yams, one of my biggest produce pet peeves (next to the discarding of broccoli stems… make broccoli slaw, folks! It’s delicious!). The reason for this famous misnomer is that the sweet potatoes native to the United States were a starchier, white potato. When sweeter, orange-fleshed varieties were introduced from South America (via Asia), they were branded as yams to differentiate them from the starchier native root veggie. (True yams are grown mostly in Africa and Asia and have brown, hairy skin and a dry, starchy flavor.)
That said, every sweet potato variety has its slight differences that lend each variety to a particular use. Here are a few examples of some varieties we carry throughout the year:
- Covington: This has become the staple sweet potato over its predecessor the Beauregard, as it is more uniform and adapted to NC soils. I like this variety for my “sweet but not too sweet” sweet potato needs, like sweet potato fries, hash, or “toast” (see recipe here), or sweet potato burrito filling.
- Garnet: This variety is super sweet with a creamy texture, perfect for whole baked sweet potatoes or a holiday mash.
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Murasaki sweet potatoes Murasaki: A white-fleshed Japanese-style potato with drier flesh, this variety is very sweet and makes awesome sweet potato fries.
- Stokes Purple: High in the antioxidant anthocyanin, these deep purple potatoes have a rich, almost caramel-like flavor when roasted. Because of their fun purple color you can get creative with these in the kitchen. Here is a link to some wild purple sweet potato recipes: https://parade.com/20179/linzlowe/what-the-heck-is-a-purple-sweet-potato-and-how-do-you-cook-it/
- Bonita: A white-fleshed as well as white-skinned variety, the Bonita is very sweet for traditional dishes or adding to baked goods.
Aside from being fun and delicious to eat, sweet potatoes are packed with nutrition. High in vitamins A and C as well as the antioxidant beta-carotene, a sweet potato forms a neat ~100 calorie package (one medium potato). There are not many foods that are this nutritionally dense while also this tasty and filling. Sweet potatoes may also help in aiding weight loss due to their high fiber content. Carbohydrates that are high in fiber are absorbed into the bloodstream more slowly, helping maintain satiety over a longer period of time. That combined with the high nutrient content means that sweet potatoes are an ideal breakfast or lunch component, rather than being empty carbs.
Most of our sweet potatoes are sourced from North Carolina 100 percent of the year (with the exception of the Stokes Purple) and are organically grown.
This week’s owner coupons are (1) a free three-pound bag of organic, North Carolina sweet potatoes with a $20 produce purchase, good October 31 to November 7, 2018 (value of sweet potatoes not included in $20 produce purchase), and (2) 25 percent off Plainville antibiotic-free fresh whole turkeys, good through November 21, 2018 (turkeys are available to pre-order, and will be in stores November 17; price per pound with coupon is $1.94). Owners, look for the coupon in our weekly e-news, sent on Wednesday morning. If you didn’t get the coupon, you may need to update your email address in our owner database. Contact us at ownershares@weaverstreetmarket.coop.
Not an owner? Become one today to receive the weekly owner coupon as well as the other benefits of ownership, like invitations to the Co-op Fair, a logo T-shirt and bag, and the right to vote in board elections. Learn more here.