Sweet Potato Weather

Sweet potatoes

This afternoon was sunny, but cold. Not a cloud in the sky. I came inside around 3 P.M. and had memories of childhood afternoons, coming home from school on the school bus, and running inside the house to get in front of the warm fire place. Then we went to the kitchen for a real treat. There were sweet potatoes baking in the big oven of the wood cook stove. Mother or grandmother Wilson placed them there after baking cornbread in the oven for lunch. They cooked slowly for about 2 hours and were just right. We peeled the dark crusty skin back, sliced the potato lengthwise and put a dollop of fresh churned butter on top of the potato. The potato was still warm and the butter would melt and run down our chins.

I cannot find potatoes in the stores or curb markets today that even resemble those delicious "roots". I think it's the process they went through they went thru after they were dug in the fall. We had to pick up the potatoes after they were turned up from the ground where the vines grew all summer. They were handled carefully and then spread out on boards to dry for a few days. Had to cover them if it rained before they were "cured". Next they were placed in hills or mounds with layers of pinestraw and dirt covering them. boards were placed over the mounds, standing up like an Indian teepee, with an opening in the top for any steam to escape.


I have made many trips to the "potato hill" to get sweet potatoes for meals. We washed them before putting them in the oven to bake. Sometimes we would boil them and then peel the skins off and mother would mash them and make a sweet potato pie, adding lots of spices, eggs, cream, sugar and baking the pie until it resembled a custard. Still one of my favorite pies.


My sister suggested that I bake a pan of sweet potatoes, all at one time and put them in the freezer, taking out one as I desired and heat it in the microwave. They're much sweeter than they are if you cook them in the microwave when they are raw.


I can only imagine our grandchildren coming home from school and being offered a hot baked sweet potato for a snack!


Tomorrow I am going to the store and get a dozen sweet potatoes, the long medium (not big round fat ones) potatoes and bake some for cold days for an afternoon snack. This will take me back about 68 years to those good ole' sweet potato days of my childhood.