Dr Oz, you are NOT smarter than an Okinawa Sweet Potato

I’ve been told many a time I have strange eating habits. Huh, what’s so weird about eating purple sweet potatoes?

My husband and I instantly fell in love with these potatoes while on our honeymoon in Hawaii last year. The yummy Okinawa Purple Sweet potato. Wow, babe, we could grow these in our Florida climate!!  So when we returned home, we searched endlessly. We tried California, local Oriental Food Markets, Hawaii, and yes, Japan, but no luck. What the heck? We finally discovered Hawaii has a little problem. They are called weevils. These weevils tirelessly decimate their crops. Hawaii’s answer to the weevil? Irradiate the crops. Well, darn it, you can’t sprout a sweet potato that’s been irradiated. And Hawaii has strict regulations about importing and exporting foods. It’s impossible to grow this sweet potato outside of Hawaii.

Apparently, Dr Oz, in all his brilliance, isn’t aware of this either. The Okinawan Sweet Potato: A Purple Powerhouse of Nutrition | Down to Earth. Thank you for the tease Dr Oz! Well I hope the Hawaiian’s are enjoying their new ‘superfood’. What about the rest of America?

Well, we found another purple sweet potato, the Stoke’s Purple Sweet Potato. (well, technically its a yam, but no one needs to know, shhhhhhh)   Purple Sweet Potatoes (Purple Yam) – Home of the Stokes Purple Sweet Potato – Stokes Foods, Inc..

So, if you’re invited to our house, and you’re served this for dinner…

know that a lot of time, hard labor, sweat, love, and patience, went into this fabulous tasting potato.

And no more making fun of me, Dr Oz thinks I’m cool for eating a superfood! 🙂

For more info Sweetpotato Production Guides for Hawaii.

Onion Thrips

Our first garden pest of the new season.

Our onion and scallions easily survived our mild winter this year.

However, we were noticing discoloration on the leaves, but couldn’t find any bugs.

Thrips gather on the leaves, leaving white blothces, eating away the chlorophyll.

We treated the leaves with Pyrethrin, an oraganic compound that paralyzes the insect.

Is it safe for human consumption? If you trust the goverment, the USDA says “it is probably the safest of all insecticides for use in food plants”.