My friend Tom just sent in a link to a boxed sweet potato product from Betty Crocker. I went through to the nutritionals, and yowza! What a difference in ingredients between ole Betty’s products and mine. Here you go:
Ingredients in Yummy Yammy Smashed Sweet Potatoes:
Roasted sweet potatoes, Cabot Creamery butter, salt, pepper
Ingredients in Betty Crocker Sweet Potato Mashed Potatoes:
Dried potatoes, dried sweet potatoes, sugar, brown sugar, salt, maltodextrin, dried margarine (partially hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, nonfat milk, soy lecithin, mono and diglycerides, artificial color, natural flavor), natural flavor, whey, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, spice, sodium caseinate, corn starch, colored with (yellow 6 lake, yellow 5 lake, artificial color), artificial flavor, tricalcium phosphate (anticaking agent), wheat flour, soy flour, freshness preserved by sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bisulfite, and citric acid.
Whew!
Theirs beats mine out in these ways:
* convenience, in that you can store it on your shelf til you need it
* long shelf life (mine is only 6 days)… wait, this is kind of the same benefit as #1…
* probably a significant price difference
But who pays the price for such a long shelf life? YOU DO! What price? It’s not money …
The price you pay is in eating the preservatives they load in there that make it last that long.
Mine beats theirs out in these ways:
* made from whole sweet potatoes, grown in the US
* no white potato included to extend it
* no artificial anything
* no margarine, just fresh, wholesome butter
* no preservatives of any kind
* fresh and ready to heat/eat
* made locally and promotes the local economy
* absolutely delicious
I could make our Smashed all year round (right now it’s only available before Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays), but to give it a 2-week shelf life like the rest of my foods, I would add citric acid and it gives it a funny, citrus-y taste that just doesn’t belong with sweet potatoes.
The other way I could offer it is frozen, but I’m not sure if you would regularly buy Yummy Yammy Smashed Sweets if they were frozen. Would you?
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So what do you think? Do you buy this kind of mix? Overall, as an occasional convenience food, do you find it’s worth having around the house and mixing up when you’re in a pinch?
Lisa Johnson, Y’Ambassador, Yummy Yammy
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I think it would be great to have the plain smashed available all year. I was thinking it would be really nice to have an unflavored one (to use to make muffins, for example!) and I didn’t know you had it until I read about it here.
The best way to offer it frozen might be packaged in 1/2 cup or 1 cup amounts, with 3 or 4 cups to the package…the same way I might do up a batch at home and then freeze it in mini muffin amounts so it’s handy for popping into soup or spag sauce or thawing out a couple of them to make muffins. That would really make it a convenience food and I think people would buy it. Include some recipes or serving ideas on the package. Have a contest to see what different things people can come up with to make using it (and your other products too) and then publish/publicize the resulting recipes.
Fun to see you today!
I like you website. Good info, entertaining and enlightening, enjoyable to browse.
love you!
lynotype
Thanks, Lynotype! We loved the muffins, as did the other folks who tried ‘em.
Great idea on the frozen sweet potato puree. We’ve been thinking about it for coop delis, but hadn’t thought about it for retail sale. We’ll see what we can do.
Glad you like the site!
xoxo
Lisa