Yam
This is a food I don't get. Don't understand it. And, I don't like it.

Apparently someone else doesn't like it much, either, because we seem to have had a large quantity of yams donated to the shelter recently. I keep seeing yams almost everyday for lunch. We've got yams.

Yam.

It's like a regular good ol'-fashioned potato, but not. It's orange, but not good orange, like an actual orange, or those orange pumpkin shaped Halloween candies. That's good orange.

When cooked, yams are mushy. Mushy. Mushy food introduces all sorts of texture issues, unpleasant to the pallate, difficult to stomach.

The taste of a yam isn't quite categorize-able. It's not necessarily sweet, unless you make it into that yammy-sweet casserole served at Thanksgiving. And that essentially only hides the yam-ness with lots of brown sugar and marshmallows. I hate that stuff. Not the brown sugar or the marshmallows. But I hate the lot of it all mixed with the yams.

Blech. Yammy casserole.

A yam isn't necessarily potato-y in taste, either. Despite the look of a potato, it seems far from a potato. Just give me a potato. If it looks like a potato, just give me an actual potato. Not an orange imposter potato.

So is it a vegetable? I guess so. By default. What else would it be? It's not a fruit. We've covered how it isn't sweet of its own power. It's not a bread. Or a fish. Or a meat. Or a breakfast food.

I guess that leaves yam as a vegetable.

Yam. What is it good for?

C.T.