Beets and Sweet Potatoes

There are times when you need to eat something you remember your parents eating. You need to eat what was on your dinner plate when you were barely in your teens. Some staple of your mother's meals. Something like beets.

Years may have gone by when evening meals could pass with nary a baked sweet potato in sight. You ate well but your mother had regularly treated the family to sweet potatoes carried from a rack in the oven directly to your plate. She might not recognize lime aioli or salsa as accompaniments worth learning the names of -- much less using in place of cinnamon. But she knew how Louisiana in the 1950s could feed a family.