Yams

For the last time, they're not yams. While it may seem difficult to get used to serving candied sweet potatoes every Thanksgiving, at least you'll be botanically correct. The yam is a very specific plant that is a staple across the Caribbean, in tropical Asia and in Africa. It is not orange and it is not sweet and it is never--at least to the best of our knowledge--served with marshmallows. What we cook in America is the sweet potato.

There is an annual debate in many American homes as to whether the orange, potato-like vegetable that's traditional on our tables at this time of year is a yam or a sweet potato. On one hand there are those copper-colored things, a bit elongated and often irregularly shaped, with a moist, almost oily flesh that sometimes oozes a sweetish liquid when baked. I always assumed these were yams, but they're not. And they're usually sold as yams, which adds to the confusion.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, my yam-mmm-mousse . . . ." crooned "Housewives' " housewife Maggie Mayall, with a chorus of "yeah, yeah, yeah" from her rock 'n' roll partners, Hope Juber and Lisa Harrison. They can't help it. Put them in a kitchen and they perform. It's their cue. Their act. With tunes like "In Sink and at Your Disposal," "Been Defrosting All Day," "Ironing Bored" and "Reynolds Rap," would you expect Shakespeare?

As a solo performance artist, Karen Finley had the gross-out honed to a fine degree. Other performance artists may have played with their food onstage, screeching ad nauseam about this and that. But Finley's sobbing spoken arias about sexual abuse, or her father's suicide, or the status of American women--sometimes performed while she poured a can or two of yams down her backside--got her a kind of attention not often seen in performance-art circles.

Use the sweet flavor of oranges to accent holiday yam dishes this season. Marshmallow Yams are baked with an orange, currant jelly and miniature marshmallows. Acadian Candied Yams get their special flavor from orange marmalade. MARSHMALLOW YAMS 6 medium yams, cooked, peeled and sliced 1 large orange, peeled, sliced and quartered 1/4 cup currant jelly 2 tablespoons butter or margarine 1 cup miniature marshmallows Arrange yams and orange pieces in greased shallow baking dish.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen campaigned Saturday in tiny Gilmer, Tex., before one of his largest crowds of the campaign--but it was an East Texas passion for sweet potatoes, not politics, to which he owed a debt of gratitude. In Gilmer it was the day of the 51st annual "Yamboree," and more than 7,000 Texans munched sweet potato pie and lined a parade route to honor the much-maligned tuber.

At first, Bill Fraser sounds like any other retiree, but then the veteran vaudevillian's voice drops, and he utters those famous words: "I'm gonna get ya, Bluto. Skiddle-dee-dee." "Anybody can do Popeye," said the man who invented the voices of the cartoon sailor, his lady love Olive Oyl and his perennial rival Brutus (since renamed Bluto). "I did them all," said Fraser, who for the last 25 years has lived in the small town of Clackamas, southeast of Portland.

Virtually all yams sold locally are actually kinds of sweet potatoes, but not all sweet potatoes are yams. The yams that most Southern Californians buy in their stores are, in fact, yam-type sweet potatoes. Confused? The botanical classification of these edible underground plant parts are enough to bewilder a biology student.

On the fourth Thursday each November, Americans gather to feast on turkey, nibble on cranberry sauce and give thanks. For a small, dedicated cadre of farmers north of Fresno and merchants in Los Angeles, Thanksgiving also means something else: yams. Millions of red and yellow yams will be baked, cut open and smeared with butter today. Thousands more will be mashed, mixed with a little brown sugar and milk, baked, and sprinkled with marshmallows and served in casserole dishes as candied yams.