DECEMBER 2022

consuming and loving sweetpotatoes enough to put the effort into entering a contest AND getting their friends excited about voting! We hosted our first-ever Registered Dietitian & Food Writer/Editor Farm Tour in early November. This was a chance for these eight dietitian/influencers to not only see how sweetpotatoes are grown and harvested, but meet the men and women behind the scenes who are responsible for growing our deliciously versatile and nutritious state vegetable! They learned about all aspects of the life of a sweetpotato: from growing to packing to processing to new and exciting ways to use them, such as aseptic purees and other value-added ways. The return on investment for this tour has been tremendous: these individuals came ready to learn and at the end of the trip have been spreading the SWEET word about everything they learned throughout their social media channels, blogs or media outlets with which they work. We finished off the tour at our 3 rd Annual FarmHER luncheon honoring the women of the NC Sweetpotato industry, along with welcoming our keynote speaker, Masterchef winner, Whitney Miller! Our goal was to meet, if not exceede last year’s total of $10,000 for this amazing breast cancer charity! We believe we succeeded, stay tuned! We couldn’t be more proud of the turnout of this beautiful event honoring our NC FarmHERS, breast cancer fighters, and survivors!

Finally, we rounded out the fall with the International Foodservice Editorial Council annual meeting in Santa Barbara, California! Here, we sponsored the opening reception’s official cocktail social with our delightful cocktail, the “Batata.” This perfect mix of sweet and spicy flavors was a huge hit with event goers, with many coming back for seconds. We also sponsored the annual awards luncheon with our delicious Roasted Sweetpotato Risotto, a perfect combination of comfort food and autumn flavors. We met with several foodservice editors and were able to lay the foundation to provide them with sweetpotato content throughout the next twelve months – for both culinary magazines and publications with school food service backgrounds. We appreciate the opportunity to return to IFEC year after year and continue to cultivate these sweet relationships on behalf of the Commission and it’s members!

7