sweet and a vegetable?

Sweet potatoes (sometimes called yams) have always been a mystery to me...they are a vegetable, but their sweet, and then the way people cook them....fries, with marshmellows, in a pie, its very odd. I was going to write about airplanes today since I'm about to head out to BWI to make my way home to kansas for the holiday, but this post was my first topic request...how could I say no? :)

• Sweet potatoes Ipomoea batatas  belonging to the family Convolvulaceae
• Some parts of the genus Ipomoea include garden flowers called morning glory
• Sweet potatoes originated in South America
• Countries where sweet potatoes are ate as a staple food: New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Uganda
• North Carolina leads the U.S. for sweet potato production
• The sweet potato is ranked the highest vegetable for nutritional value and ranked 184 points, 100 points more than the next vegetable on the list (the common potato) 
• The first record of the name "sweet potato" is found in the Oxford English Dictionary of 1775
• Yams are actually related to grasses and lillies, sweet potatoes are a distant cousin of the potato