Given the background description of some cooking related query, summarize the question into a title

[EX Q]: Picked up from farmer's market yesterday. Not sure if organic.No smell. Slimey texture. Strong grip. A few have started to sprout.About 4 on this one leaf. Other leafs have none.Any idea what they could be?
[EX A]: What is this? Fresh Kale looks to have small sprouting seeds, although looks similar to insect eggs

[EX Q]: I recently bought something that was labelled at the grocery store as a "purple sweet potato". They were larger than what I am used to for sweet potatoes, but looked similar, although they had a purple skin on the outside and white flesh on the inside. I figured since they were labelled as "sweet potatoes", I would prepare them the same way I like to prepare regular sweet potatoes, by boiling them first (for about 40 minutes), then removing the skin, slicing it into wedges and then pan frying them. I have done this many times with normal sweet potatoes, and it works quite well.However, after I boiled the purple sweet potatoes for 45 minutes, I pulled them out to take the skins off, and they were soft and stringy and incredibly off putting - they felt the same way as a gummy mashed potato would feel, and they fell apart all over the place.Are they more like a potato, requiring less boiling time? Or is there something else going on here that I am missing?Edit: I went to the grocery store today, and they are now labelled as "purple yams". I don't know if that makes a difference or not. I also got a picture of them, to make my description a bit clearer.
[EX A]: Cooking "purple sweet potatoes" or "purple yams"

[EX Q]: I sometimes find myself wanting to eat whole nuts in situations where I have no access to a nutcracker, whether because I'm at work or traveling or otherwise not in a place where I might be expected to keep a nutcracker on hand. I've had good luck squeezing two pecans together in my hand, but what other nuts are good for improvised cracking methods?
[EX A]:
Which nuts can be cracked without tools?