Quote:
Originally Posted by GA Russell
Gtrs, not to quibble, but...
Sweet potatoes are native to Central and South America. It is the yam which is native to Africa.
(I went to Wikipedia to make sure! This is a tough crowd here, isn't it?)
|
I stand corrected. You're part of the _good_ crowd, GA--ex: you don't berate a person when he's wrong.
I was so "sure" of what I said being true that I didn't see any need to look it up! There are usually enough resident scholars on each thread that they'll set a poster straight when he's wrong, though.
Yams and sweet potatoes are very similar. Interesting, though, I have never heard of a yam pie. Wish my grandmother were living, so I could ask her why not.
For that matter, I have never heard of anyone in the deep South growing (farm kind of growing) yams! But the reason may be that there's more money in cotton and peanuts (and sweet potatoes) than growing yams.
There is one very interesting fact about the South, related to our two posts, that I have pondered quite a bit over the years: Southerners, almost "to the man," were very poor until about the mid-20th century or so. Yet, many of the common foods of Southerners were _imported_ (read that as "_expensive_"). Tea--product of China; bananas (for banana pudding)--South America, maybe even Central America; coffee--somewhere in South and/or Central America and, as you pointed out--sweet potatoes (although I think that they began to be grown extensively in the South). I am forgetting some, but you get the picture.