About Sweet Potatoes

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To freeze, cook the washed tubers for about an hour until they're tender. Peel them, cut or mash them, and pack them into containers to be stored in the freezer.

Thin slices dried for several days in the sun or in a low oven produce tasty ("bet-you can't-eat-just-one") sweet potato chips.

SUSAN SAYS

MOTHER'S GARDENER, SUSAN SIDES, shares a few thoughts on sweet potatoes:

The verdant, luxuriant sprawl of heart shaped leaves—the aboveground part of the sweet potato—always makes me think of it as a houseplant of tropical origin. I even imagine that the ones in my garden have somehow come from pots on verandahs and side tables throughout the neighborhood. I picture the imprisoned plants sending out long, swift runners during the night and escaping triumphantly to stretch their orange toes in the great outdoors between my sweet corn and butter beans.

When a dear friend of mine named Yung Li heard me tell of this, she laughed, saying, "Obviously your neighbors aren't of Asian descent." She then showed me how she kept those tender tips pinched back to use as a tasty addition to stir-fry. You can use older leaves, she cautioned, but they won't have that melt-in-your-mouth texture. At her insistence I tried some—both in a stir-fry dish and a la carte. And they truly are delicious.

"No," said Yung, "a sweet potato vine wouldn't have a chance in China of running away from our house. We nip that kind of nonsense in the bud."

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