Local cooking, city style

Winter in Houston doesn’t mean piles of snow, trees full of ice, frozen roads. It means panic in the face of below 30 degrees F. and deep mourning over frostbitten plants. I’m no exception, but, hey!, every cloud has a silver or, at least, a yummy lining.

Last summer, was so proud of turning a parking lot front yard of a leased house into if not a bower at least a colorful, flowery place. No longer.

One day last week, I dragged my super-cold infected body to the front porch. Oh! Pain! And not from the cold. Into my clothes and out the door. I had to save my poor ornamental sweet potatoes. Harvest those tubers and root them for next year’s even better bower.

What a crop! I can’t root that many, and they look just like the potatoes at the market. Hmmm. Never heard that merely because they are called ‘ornamental’ they can’t be eaten too.

I’ve lived to tell the tasty tale. I concocted a fine kettle of soup using my city lot crop of sweet potato and rosemary, mixed with some beef, broth and noodles and served, appropriately enough in our winter snowman soup cups.

Local cooking, city style!

PS Help! How do I move pictures around in my text?