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Article: Yam session: Sweet potatoes for the holidays
- Article from:
- New Orleans Magazine
- Article date:
- November 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright New Orleans Publishing Group Inc. Nov 1998. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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A yam is a yam. Or is it?
Whatever it's commonly called, it has even been sanctified by the Sugar Busters! movement, which has the regular potato on its hit list but not, despite its name, the sweet potato.
As another holiday season approaches, during which bright-orange "Louisiana yams" will be baked as well as (despite Sugar Busters!) marshmallowed, pralined and candied, it's worth pondering the strange twist of language that ties this city to a tropical world in which we don't exactly exist but to which we have always belonged.
Yams, botanists tell us, are grown only in the tropics; encountered there, the white starchy orbs bear little resemblance to our "yams" bursting with ...