Thank-ful for Pie

It's not even my favorite pie (pecan is), but it is a close second.  Sweet Potato Pie is the unsung holiday pie and I set out to search for the best in New York City.  Although my search (for now) has only rendered 3 video, my sweet journey is not over, there are more pies to taste, test, and enjoy.  
Happy Thanksgiving! 

Little Known Sweet Potato Pie History [source Black American Web.com]

During the sixteenth century, Brits from Europe brought the tradition of making pumpkin pies for dessert to West Africa. The tradition was soon brought to America during slavery, where the African slaves transformed the dessert into something sweeter using yams, then sweet potatoes. Coincidentally, yams and black-eyed peas was a common food slaves were fed during the Middle Passage. 

The name of the food was inconsistent at first, because the yam and sweet potato come from two different types of plants. The word yam in African dialects was either “Oyame or Yam Yam” or a few other terms with a few other meanings. Yams are monocots from the Dioscorea family. Sweet potatoes are from the Morning Glory plant family. 

Sweet potato pie recipes made a cookbook debut in the 18th century. In the late part of the 19th century, Fannie Famer featured a recipe for glazed sweet potatoes in the Boston Cooking School Cookbook. Soon after, inventor George Washington Carver began to find various uses for the sweet potato, including in a candied version. He released over 100 uses for the vegetable.