Thanksgiving Leftovers

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  • Sweet potatoes were grown in Peru as early as 750 B.C.

  • A yam and a sweet potato are two different things.  Sweet potatoes are in the Morning glory family.  Yams are from, well, the yam family.  Not only are they not yams, they're not potatoes either! In fact, they aren't even distant cousins. Potatoes are tubers from the nightshade family.  Morning glory, nightshade... hmm.

  • Sweet potatoes were being grown in these parts when Columbus arrived in 1492.

  • George Washington grew sweet potatoes on his farm at Mount Vernon, Virginia.

  • George Washington Carver worked extensively with the sweet potato. He developed 118 different products from sweet potatoes, including a glue for postal stamps, an economic method for sizing cotton fabrics, dehydrated food and an alternative to corn syrup. Also, in 1896, Carver was appointed head of the Agricultural Department at the Tuskegee Institute where he showed the value of soil regeneration by planting sweet potatoes as the rotation crop for cotton. Carver demonstrated successfully that a diet of peanuts and sweet potatoes could achieve nutrition economically.

  • In 1918, during WWI, when the supplies of wheat flour were falling behind, the USDA utilized sweet potato flour to stretch wheat flour in baked goods.
- Compiled by Keith Nichols, News Services