Using aging sweet potatoes

We stored a lot of sweet potatoes in our basement over the winter.  They held up pretty well until recently.  Today I went through them and separated the good ones from the bruised and not-so-appealing ones.   What was left was a 5 gallon bucket of decent, hard sweet potatoes.  James grew white and red sweet potatoes.  For those of you who plan to grow them this year, I should mention the ones that held up the best were the red ones. 

I cooked some of the yucky ones and gave them to the pigs.  They weren't overly-enthusiastic but they did eat them.  I wasn't sure if they were hesitant because they were still hot or they don't love sweet potatoes.  I have plenty more for them.

I was afraid the good ones may not stay "good" if I didn't do something with them soon so I decided to make sweet potato fries to put in our freezer.  I sliced them into thin strips.

Then deep fat fried them in vegetable shortening for 4 minutes.  I drained them on paper towels then put them in a single layer on cookie sheets and froze them. 

After freezing for 2 hours I put them in freezer bags for future dinners when I can either fry them again or bake them in the oven.  After seeing all the fat that was absorbed I think I'll be baking them.

This hardly put a dent in the number of sweet potatoes we have left to use so for dinner I made sweet potato soup.