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REIDSVILLE — Darlington, S.C., has a sweet potato parade. Snow Hill, 80 miles east of Raleigh, has an annual sweet potato festival, and since 1961, Georgia has crowned a sweet potato queen.

But hold your marshmallow topping. Reidsville may be the only city that can claim a sweet potato blogger.

From her home on Belmont Street, Jocelyn McCall spends eight to 10 hours a week researching, testing recipes and writing about the sweet potato. You can find the blog, which is sponsored by the N.C. Sweet Potato Commission, at http://sweetbytesblog.blogspot.com.

If you’re into blogging and sweet potatoes, you may already have discovered Sweet Bytes. Since starting the blog in October, McCall — she uses the pseudonym Jana on the blog — says her household has been chowing down on the vegetable, as she tests and they taste new recipes.

After trying out a dish, she shares it with readers, while also touting the versatility, the health benefits, the down-right deliciousness of the sweet potato.

Now, no one really has to sell me on the sweet potato, although I must admit I’ve limited myself to the likes of my sister-in-law’s sweet potato casserole at Thanksgiving and sweet potato pie — my mother actually dangled a big forkful in front of my youngest child to entice him to take his first steps. It worked.

But, now that I’ve logged on to Sweet Bytes, I realize that there’s a whole sweet potato world out there that I’ve been missing by indulging only during Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Take Valentine’s Day. While most of us were nibbling on chocolates and heart-shaped cookies, McCall was pulling a sweet potato pizza out of the oven. And during the Super Bowl, as we wolfed down chili and dunked chips in salsa, our sweet potato blogger’s family was feasting on sweet potato burritos.

But, it appears that not only are sweet potatoes good for you, if you’re clever enough to come up with your very own recipe, they can be downright lucrative.

At the moment, McCall is encouraging fellow bloggers to enter a sweet potato recipe contest. You can read about it on her blog. The top prize is $1,000, and five runners-up will get $100.

You have to be 18 or older, have a blog, and you can’t be a chef or a culinary professional. But, outside of that, the contest is open to anyone in the United States.

Already, one of McCall’s readers has entered her Nutty Vanilla Sweet Potato Soup.

The competition could be stiff, says McCall. Since starting the blog in October, she’s logged in 2,048 visitors, many who rave about her recipes.

One of her favorites: sweet potato hash browns. “It’s a hundred times better than hash browns made with Irish potatoes,” she says.

McCall, who is 56, considers herself a “foodie.” She’s taught cooking classes and spends a lot of time in the kitchen cooking for her husband and two adult sons. Even their snacks are homemade.

Sweet Bytes is her first attempt at blogging.

An advertising company in New York representing the Sweet Potato Commission e-mailed her, asking her to apply for the position. She has no idea how they found her, but she does contribute regular product reviews to an online Web site, Expo TV at www.expotv.com. “Maybe they found me through that,” she says.

“They (the advertising company) represent a lot of odd vegetables, like the artichoke. I’m glad I didn’t get picked for that one,” she says.

At the end of March, when the recipe contest is over, McCall says she’ll start passing on more cooking and kitchen tips to her readers, along with sweet potato recipes, crossword puzzles and other word games themed around the vegetable.

“It is such a gracious gift to me to be able to educate people about healthy eating and food heritage,” she says.

Her contract to do the sweet potato blog extends through June, but she’s hoping to continue it. And, she’s thinking about starting two more blogs: one on caring for elderly parents, and another that will offer quick tips for busy moms.

No doubt she’ll have a sweet potato recipe or two to pass along.

Contact Myla Barnhardt at 627-4881, Ext. 116, or myla.barnhardt@news-record.com