Costco has the coolest new item in produce: raw sweet-potatos, peeled and cut in sticks. Sweet potatoes are something you may not have eaten RAW before, but they’re crunchy, mild, and best of all, one of just a handful of foods that have all of the eight amino acids your body cannot manufacture on its own (cucumbers are another one).
The lady in line in front of me asked how I keep them from getting mushy. I drew a blank and said, “They’re not mushy—they’re crunchy.” She said, yeah, but when you freeze and thaw them, when you go to cook them . . .Instead of cooking sweet potatoes, try putting them in your kids’ lunches. I just came home with some, and my kids have almost disappeared them already.
You know the lady who writes on your receipt with a marker on your way out of Costco? She said to me, hey, these things are so great deep fried! I couldn’t help it—I busted out laughing. (She doesn’t know me, like the checkers and baggers do.) I said, “Awesome! Then you make a really, really healthy food into junk food!” She said, yeah, but it tastes so good!
I laughed all the way to the car. (Still, I’m going to try sauteeing them in a little coconut oil, since it doesn’t create trans fats even at high temps, and see how they are–I’ll let you know if they’re any good.)
Jicama is another vegetable for you to try raw, cut into sticks: it’s crunchy and sweet. If you don’t know how to pronounce it, it’s Spanish, “hi-ca-ma.” You had to be there at the salad bar years ago: we were going through the line. A young boy in front of us pointed to jicama on the salad bar and asked his mom what it was. She looked at the label, tried to sound it out, gave up, and told her son, “It’s . . . it’s . . . Jamaican Cheese!” In my family, we’ve called jicama “Jamaican Cheese” for 10 years now.
