Your favorite green bean concoction

[ritaxis]

 (I was thinking about this song)

Blue Lake pole beans are prodigiously productive. 

So far I have made (some of them multiple times):

Turkish green beans in olive oil with tomatoes

stir fried green beans with fermented black beans sauce

stir fried green beans with oyster sauce and rice noodles

salad of blanched green beans with mustard vinaigrette, hardboiled egg and potato

green bean stew with chicken and turmeric and other vegetables

sauteed zucchini with green beans, red pepper and basil

fried rice with green beans

pasta with green beans and asiago cheese

and one day I just flipped out and mainlined a kilo of them raw while I was distracted, reading the internet


how do you eat green beans? Of course I do know about making them with mushroom sauce and a topping of fried onions and I will probably eventually do that.

Comments

[graydon]

I don't particularly have a favourite green bean concoction, but I'm going to sit here and marvel and having garden green beans in September.

(Out of your list, the Turkish green beans and the salad of blanched... both sound splendid.)

[ritaxis]

We have a long summer. In my case it's a very good thing because while there's almost never a killing frost, neither is it warm enough or bright enough for summer vegetables to get going until the middle or end of May, so to get any kind of growing season it's really good not to have the system shut down early.

I have pulled out the bush beans (amid vows never to grow them again since they produce so much less for the amount of land they use than the pole beans do) and I'm planning the winter garden (kohlrabi and onions mainly).

[graydon]

I understand bush beans to be useful mostly for conditions that won't grow pole beans.

Winter onions sounds lovely.

When I was small, the May 24 weekend was the traditional day to put the garden in, because that was the frost safe day. It's moved back into April now. Beans (traditionally) tend to be done by June; too dry. Given that this year it won't stop raining so no one has the hay off (good for the bobolinks) that might be less of a concern. September would have the whole garden winding down; there's a reason Canadian thanksgiving is in October. :)

[ritaxis]

Yeah, I can't think of what at the moment would make bush beans the right choice. They say for small gardens, but unless you're on a short-ceilinged balcony, pole beans seem more thrifty.

I always thought that our earlier spring and milder weather meant my garden *should* go in earlier, but the fact is that the spring is foggy, rainy, cool, and dark, and seeds do not want to sprout until summer (May). Where I get the advantage is inn the long summer and the mild winter.

[hairmonger]

None of your concoctions sound at all appealing to me, except the soup. My family tradition favors very plain vegetables, cooked with a little salt and nothing else. Those of my great-aunts and uncles who preferred their turnip greens with vinegar were looked at askance by the majority, who considered that ruining perfectly good greens.

Mary Anne in Kentucky

[ritaxis]

I do like plain vegies but some of those I actually consider to be plain (stir fry). But right now I'm eating about a pound of green beans every other day, even with giving some away...I need variety! Also most of those are just combining vegetables together, sometimes with herbs.

[hrj]

One of my favorites, though in part out of laziness, is raw dredged lightly in hummus.

[ritaxis]

Do you ever get a scratchy throat from eating lots of raw green beans?

[hrj]

No, though I rarely eat vast quantities -- never more than a few hundred grams at a time. But it may be one of those individual sensitivity things.