Candied Sweet Potatoes

All my life I’ve called this dish Candied Yams, but now in my later years I’m told that sweet potatoes and yams are not the same.  Duh! I have tried over and over to make these like my mother did.  Hers were so good and looked just as pretty.  I know she didn’t use Karo Syrup — she didn’t have such.  Anyway, I never come close to making them as she did — I can’t get the glaze right — too thin or too hard.  So now I use a recipe given me to my dear tatting friend — Gwen, who is now tatting or doing whatever in Heaven. It just seemed this dish would be the very thing to be on the table with turnip greens.  Speaking of turnip greens, our patch is pathetic — we have not had a good rain in ages and it’s just too much to drag a hose and stand there and water.  After all, here at The Windy Knoll we only have a well — no county or city water — so we have to be saving with water.

Remember this is two old folks trying to manage without help — we clean together (what little we do) and we cook together also.  I took the potatoes out of the mixture when I could push the fork in and I left John in charge of the glaze and he wanted to be sure it cooked long enough to be the right consistency.  Duh, again!!  It was so hard we needed a mattock to pry it loose from the Pyrex.  Ha!  The taste was wonderful, but the clean up was another story.  When I see blogs where these ladies are cooking they have the prettiest dishes to use — and I just have dishes I’ve had for more than 50- years.  Wish you could see the Pyrex pie plate these potatoes are on.  It’s one that was made only on in the Pyrex world — maybe in the late ’40’s.  It has a design on the bottom and seems more fragile than today’s Pyrex.

Hope you’ll try this delicious dish and hope you can determine when to remove it from the hot eye.  Good luck — this, too, is country living.

Candied Sweet Potatoes

2 large potatoes peeled and sliced thin or cut in strips
3/4 cup white Karo syrup
1 cup sugar
1/2 stick of butter or margarine
1 tsp vanilla
A little water

Combine the above (recipe says in a dutch oven)  I just use a regular boiler.  Remove the potatoes when they are forkable — let the glaze cook ’til it “rolls off the fork.”  For me this is guess work — I wonder if we could use a candy thermometer. Pour glaze over potatoes and enjoy.

Candied Sweet Potatoes