An embarrassment of sweet potatoes

A blog named "Pie for Breakfast" probably should start out with pie, right?

Last week a co-worker of mine presented me with a grocery bag full of sweet potatoes, gleaned from a field near her house. And I mean about twenty-five pounds of little sweet potatoes, smelling of earth and sweet autumn. I wasn't sure what to do with them at first -- I mean, Thanksgiving is coming and all, but how much sweet potato casserole can one person make? Especially when neither of us likes marshmallow much to start with.

Then I found a recipe for Sweet Potato-Pecan Pie in a King Arthur Flour Baking Sheet from 2006. I like pecan pie, and Wiggy LOVES it, so I've made it plain, with Jack Daniels, and with chocolate for him. A combination of sweet potatoes and pecans would be just different enough to make it fun.

The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of mashed cooked sweet potatoes, which involves boiling them. I peeled eight small sweet potatoes with a potato peeler. Then I decided that perhaps my apple peeler/corer/slicer would do a better job. (Hint: it doesn't.) Five partially-peeled spuds later, I was losing my patience. I cut up all thirteen, put them on to boil and decided that the rest of the spuds could just wait their turn while I cleaned up the mess.

Now, I have this tendency to forget simple, well-known properties of things, so I wind up reinventing the wheel every so often. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that the partially peeled ones shed the rest of their skins in the boiling water, but I was quite pleased with my discovery. I scrubbed every last one of the remaining potatoes, and boiled them up.

So I made two pies. Sweet potato, egg, brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and a little cream on the bottom, pecans, brown sugar, dark corn syrup and a little salt on the top. Oh, and a really interesting pie crust mixed *in* the pie baker, and made with vegetable oil. Almost crunchy, quite tasty and not a bit too sweet, the perfect bottom for smooth sweet potatoes and a pecan top.

Of course now I have twenty pounds of boiled mashed sweet potatoes in the fridge. I think sweet potato gnocchi will be on the Thanksgiving menu; that should take care of maybe two cups of them. I think I'll be looking for more recipes -- just hold the marshmallows.