Sweet potato tasting

  We tasted and scored 24 different sweet potato varieties last week.  For individual photos of each variety, click here.

  The highest average scores went to two varieties that haven't been at the top before, one that's been good but not at the very top before, Kyushu 100, and another that we had just grown for the first time, Saffron.  Kyushu also received the most 1st place votes. 

Other 1st place votes this year went to Faux Beau, Red Japanese, and Kotobuki.  Tennessee Red had the third highest average score after Kyushu and Saffron.  As usual, Covington and the purple fleshed varieties scored at the bottom of our taste test.  Covington is the most common variety sold in supermarkets, and although there's nothing wrong with the taste, there are definitely better tasting varieties, and we really don't like the baby food texture of Covington as a baked potato.  We do like Covington for other uses, however, like deep frying for potato chips, but we only compared baked potatoes for our taste test.  The purple fleshed varieties might also be pretty good in other uses.  They're not especialy sweet, and maybe there's some bitterness to them, which at first we find off-putting, especially in a blind taste test where we're expecting an average sweet potato, but that slight bitterness or whatever that flavor is might actually be good in some things.  We're thinking it might be good in the sorts of savory dishes that sometimes include unsweetened cocoa, for example, like chile.  In any case, they add striking color.  Nancy Hall, which has been our overall favorite more years than any other variety, was good this year but not as outstanding as it usually is.

  Having done these annual sweet potato tests for about 15 years now, it's remarkable how much variation there can be from year to year.  Besides the varieties already mentioned, other varieties that scored well in this year's taste test included Gem, Kotobuki, Suwan, Porto Rico, White Bunch, Scott Orange, White Triumph, and Murasaki.  PI 267946, which was among our overall favorites last year, is a variety we've definitely been enjoying this winter, but for some reason it didn't score very high in this taste test.  And although Woksaken didn't score high, that may have more to do with it being unexpectedly different rather than it not being as good.  It has a very dry, almost flaky texture, rather like a baked russet Irish potato.

Gardening in wooden shoes

 Have you ever worn wooden shoes?  Before my 44th birthday I had never worn them either.  Now I wonder how and why I waited that long.  Come to find out, they are great garden shoes.  They easily meet my garden shoe requirements of being mud/water proof and are easy to get on and off.  Even better, they can be made to fit to near perfection with some basic wood carving tools.  They offer great protection for your feet, too.  And best of all, they're made entirely of natural material -- nothing but solid wood -- and at the end of their life they won't end up in a landfill like all of my previous worn out garden shoes.
  My pair came from a tourist store in Holland, MI that resells Dutch made wooden shoes.  Someday, maybe we'll carve our own shoes.  (We just need to find a simple hand tool we can use for hollowing out the inside.)  They came with the traditional pointed shoe tip, which I recently decided to sand off, thus the temporary white tip until my garden work stains it back to garden brown.

Stepping through mud season on the farm

 

 

 With so many feet (and paws) traveling the paths of our farm, it doesn't take long for the walkways to become very muddy during rainy weather.  We think we've found a low-tech renewable solution: oak stepping "stone," from a neighbor's tree that blew down in a storm a few months ago.  Hopefully they are rot-resistant enough for the heartwood to last many years, but we'll see.

 

 

In the mood for some pumpkin pie?

  We still have plenty of our big heirloom pie pumpkins left.  Their bright orange pulp tastes great in pies, soup, and muffins.  To cook, simply quarter the pumpkin and put on rimmed baking sheets.  Bake at 350 for a couple hours then scoop out the flesh.  Don't forget to drink the juice - it's a sweet warm drink.  The pulp freezes great for later use.