Potato Party

Last week, I helped the special needs class dig up their little garden of sweet potatoes. They harvested over 100 potatoes. It was a fun, random, activity. And everyone got to take home one big, fat potato. The rest were set aside for a bbq that the class is going to have tomorrow. I told them that sweet potatoes are a traditional American food, a traditional dish at Thanksgiving. For some reason, this was a surprising fact, even though sweet potatoes are a New World food. I told them that I wanted to make candied sweet potatoes for the class. So the teacher gave me 3 more big, fat potatoes. They're in the oven right now. I hope they turn out well, otherwise everyone is going to think that American food is bad.

My position as a foreigner in Japan whose purpose in being here is to internationalize the students has made me think more about the US. And I view the US in a more positive light than I often did while at home. I routinely answer questions about what we have in America, what we do in America, what things are like in America. I've never really given any thought to what American food is. As a lover of all sorts of foreign cuisines, I've never given American cuisine much credit. But I really love sweet potatoes and other Thanksgiving foods (I'm definitely going to have a bit before bringing them to school...too make sure they turned out okay....) Next month I have to teach elementary school lessons on "American culture" and I'm not sure what I should teach about. I'm open to any and all suggestions.

And I'm going to cut these ponderings short because I have to go check on my sweet potatoes.