Crusades

Warning- this post may not be interesting to anybody except me. Don't blame me if you read it and then want those 5-10 minutes of your life back.

I have a few crusades in my life, and since I have nothing else particularly to write about just now, I thought I'd get the message out about a couple of my crusades. Sorry if you've already heard the spiel on one or both of these before.

1. Tomatoes. I feel very strongly about the proper treatment of tomatoes. The Deseret News had an article this week that briefly went over how to care for tomatoes after they've been picked, and I want to go over this in more depth. Tomatoes should never be kept in the fridge. People put a lot of effort into growing or buying the best, juiciest, most flavorful tomatoes, and then they get them home and stick them in the fridge. The flavor compounds in raw tomatoes start breaking down when they get below 40 degrees. That's why tomatoes become mushy and bland (I'm assuming they started good- if you bought a tomato from Walmart in February and were surprised when it was mushy and bland, you've got bigger issues). But if you have a good tomato from your garden DON'T PUT IT IN THE FRIDGE! STORE IT ON THE COUNTER! If you can't eat it before it goes bad, give it away. It's like the Mackinaw peaches on Seinfeld. You've got to eat them while they're in, and share them if you can't appreciate them. Your new tomato mantra should be, "Cold makes it old." Don't forget it.

2. Sweet potatoes vs. yams. These terms have become interchangeable in society, and that bothers me. Sweet potatoes and yams are two entirely different foods. When I was in college taking my fruit and vegetable science class (not only does that class exist, but it's the best class ever!), my professor told us that we would probably never see a yam in North America. But now that we have a more global economy, I'm sure you could find one in an international market in a big city (on a tangent- 10 years ago you would never have found a durian in America, and maybe things were better that way. But if you find one now, make sure it's fresh. Trust me). Anyway, sweet potatoes are the orange or sometimes white tubers you see in all the grocery stores, both canned and fresh. Even if the can says 'yams', they're sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are either firm or soft varieties. To distinguish between the two, back in the early days of production, American slaves sometimes called the soft varieties yams, because they kind of looked like the yams they knew in Africa-that's where the confusion started. Sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family; yams are in the lily family. If you need a sweet potato mantra, try "yams from foreign lands".