Roasted sweet potatoes are a common street snack in Beijing
A sure sign of winter in Beijing is the appearance of roasted sweet potato vendors on every corner. Since moving here, a steaming kao digua, or roasted sweet potato has been one of my favorite cold weather foods. It sounds like Americans are also starting to appreciate them just as much.
Everything about a roasted sweet potato is great – the warmth in your hand on a cold day, the bright orange color (just think of all that beta carotene!), the sweet but wholesome flavor and the soft, starchy inside. But I actually never liked sweet potatoes until I came to China and began eating them this way. We didn’t cook them in our house growing up, despite being
A sweet potato seller weighs his goods
from North Carolina, which NYT has now identified as “the nation’s the most prolific sweet potato state,” thanks to its rising popularity in America:
In North Carolina, where 47 percent of the nation’s sweet potatoes are grown, farmers are glad everyone else seems to be catching on to a classic Southern culinary tradition. It helps replace the money that used to be made from tobacco and cotton.
It makes me happy – some sorely needed good news for my home state and more delicious sweet potatoes to go around. According to the article, it was sweet potato fries, which we used to snack on at Top of the Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as well as rising diabetes rates and health-consciousness among Americans that have driven this trend.
Beijingology 