Yams and sweet potatoes--like OWS and the Tea Party

Our Monday exercise class instructor challenged the class to track calories for one week, so I've been reading labels and checking the internet. I'm a bit bored with the usual fare of peas, beans and corn, so today at Giant Eagle I looked at sweet potatoes--or thought I did. I actually almost picked up a yam, which isn't even close in nutritional value to a sweet potato. The two aren't even related. Yam has 3% vit. A; sweet potato has 770%. Yam is inflammatory; sweet potato is highly anti-inflammatory.

Sweet potato
770% vit. A
65% vit. C.
180 Calories
Highly anti-inflammatory
This food is low in Sodium, and very low in Saturated Fat and Cholesterol. It is also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin B6 and Potassium, and a very good source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Manganese.

Yam
3% vit. A
27% vit. C
158 calories
Moderately inflammatory
This food is very low in Saturated Fat, Cholesterol and Sodium. It is also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin C, Potassium and Manganese

Sweet potatoes: Popular in the American South, these yellow or orange tubers are elongated with ends that taper to a point and are of two dominant types. The paler-skinned sweet potato has a thin, light yellow skin with pale yellow flesh which is not sweet and has a dry, crumbly texture similar to a white baking potato. The darker-skinned variety (which is most often called "yam" in error) has a thicker, dark orange to reddish skin with a vivid orange, sweet flesh and a moist texture.

The true yam: is the tuber of a tropical vine (Dioscorea batatas) and is not even distantly related to the sweet potato. The word yam comes from African words njam, nyami, or djambi, meaning "to eat," and was first recorded in America in 1676.

The yam tuber has a brown or black skin which resembles the bark of a tree and off-white, purple or red flesh, depending on the variety. They are at home growing in tropical climates, primarily in South America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Yams are generally sweeter than a sweet potato.

So, from now on, I'm buying only sweet potatoes--better nutrition and highly anti-inflammatory.

For lunch I'm having sweet potato sticks, with some fresh spinach. Not sure it will exactly this in appearance, but all the nutritional stuff should be there.

Eating from the pantry

That's the title of today's food blog at the Columbus Dispatch. Occasionally I have to do that, because I don't plan menus, and increasingly have become careless about planning my shopping (I was quite good about planning ahead when I was working). But if there's one diet and budget trick I've learned over the years, it's DO NOT buy in quantity. You need those fresh fruits and vegetables, and you can't expect them to last. Also, every overweight person I know keeps huge stores of food in the house, and always accumulates leftovers, which they use as an excuse to "clean up" (eat). I doubt that it saves much money if you really keep track of prices. The super jumbo size is not always the best buy per ounce or pound. Also, every grocery store has weekly "loss leaders," and even if you avoid coupons the way I do, you can always pick up a good deal with those.

However, on my grocery shopping day, which is usually Monday or Tuesday, I do tend to clean out the tired and poor that have taken up residence in the frig yearning to be free. Monday this week I made sweet potato soup--and I did make it a few weeks ago, but this one was better because I didn't toss in the slightly sharp fresh pineapple that wasn't very fresh anymore. Cooking tip: pineapple is too stringy to go through an old blender that's about 35 years old. So here's the recipe:

1 can (14 oz) of chicken broth
1 medium onion, cut in pieces
1 medium white potato, peeled and cut in pieces
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut in pieces
1 small carrot, peeled and cut in pieces (this is just for color in case your sweet potatoes are pale)
Bring to boil, reduce heat. After the veggies are tender scoop them out and run through the blender.
Add about 1 cup of half and half, or can of evaporated milk, or regular milk.

Return to sauce pan and the remaining broth. Just a smidgen of cinnamon really brings out the flavor.

The white potato is for thickening, just as in broccoli soup, but I suppose you could use flour or corn starch.

This soup was very hearty and thick. My husband scraped every bit out of his bowl; served with a bowl of fresh fruit and sugar free brownie for dessert.

And that's another item. Pillsbury reduced-sugar brownie mix didn't sit long in the pantry. In fact, I made it on Monday. I would give it a B+. It's very hard to make low or sugar free favorites taste right (uses Splenda), but this was very close, and served with a little sugar-free vanilla ice cream, "it wasn't half bad," as my grandpa use to say.