Sweet Potato Soup Guest Post (and winner)

The holiday season is an incredibly busy time.  Factor in the end of the school semester (taking two classes, teaching 1 that ends before Christmas) and picking up more hours of work (2 co-workers had their last days) and it is easy to see why I am so busy that I can't even find time to relax and get some new posts up.  But I promise they are coming!

In fact, I wrote a guest post over at Stone Soup, the blog for the Food and Nutrition Magazine, which is from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.  The theme was Fall so I decided to write about some of my fall favorites in Japan.  One of these is a sweet potato soup that I made from the Unno potato.  Ever heard of the Unno?  Yeah, I hadn't either.  It is s purple variety of sweet potato local to the area where I live in rural northern Japan.  Actually, the outside of the potato is purple but the inside is a creamy color that turns orange when you cook it.  

In Japan there is a restriction on potato imports from the US.  This means all of the potatoes we get at the commissary are Japanese.  Around Thanksgiving time a lot of people will ask about getting in American sweet potatoes so that they can make their favorite dishes.  Sadly, the answer is no.  The closest thing in Japan to an American yam for the holidays is the Unno potato.  People make do, but I have heard that it is just not the same for sweet potato pie.  I guess the answer there is stick with canned.  For me, I am happy to experiment with the Unno potato.  It worked perfectly in the sweet potato soup I came up with. 

So head over to Stone Soup and check out my post:

http://foodandnutritionmagazine.com/rediscovering-fall-japanese-sweet-potato-soup 

Oh, I nearly forgot.  I did select a winner for a copy of my book.  I never heard back, so I have selected another winner.  Congratulations to Jessie from the Happiness in Health!