Dear green beans,
I love you. According to my mom, I always have — when I was a little kid, our garden never seemed to produce you, but I always seemed to make happy little crunching noises when I came back from picking you only to report that I hadn't found anything. Now that I have a garden of my very own, I can't seem to plant enough of you to bring in more than a handful at a time, but I still make those happy little crunching noises, so it's all good.
When I do manage to bring you inside, sometimes I cook you like my mom did, and my grandmother (although I usually make you a little crunchy for Oma's taste) — simple boiling or steaming. I'm also a big fan of garlicky green beans, sautéed in olive oil or butter, and often a splash of balsamic vinegar as well, which is what led me to the preparation I can't seem to stop snacking on tonight.
To start, we got 1 1/2 pounds of you in our CSA box this week --- oh darn. After much snacking, I think we had a pound left when I got around to cooking this afternoon, and because I was feeling lazy I skipped the boiling/steaming step in favor of a mix of sautéing and steaming, like so:
After I got the beans and garlic cleaned, I heated a few tablespoons of oil over medium-high heat in a pan big enough to hold all the beans. I added the garlic and cooked that until it foamed and the smell reminded me why garlic, like David Bowie and purring cats, is proof that the universe can't be all bad. Next I added a splash of water and the green beans, lowering the heat as soon as I saw the water boil. I let everything cook for a total of maybe four minutes, stirring occasionally and testing the beans frequently for doneness (by eating them, of course; quality control is Job One!) At the end of this arduous task, the beans were bright green, and I added a splash (a few tablespoons) of balsamic vinegar which dulled their color somewhat but the deliciousness gained more than justified the sacrifice in appearance. I let everything cook for another minute, so the beans could absorb a bit of the vinegar, then lifted them out of the pan into a bowl, only to discover that quite a bit of watery, garlicky vinegar was left in the pan. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste, so I did a trick that makes mediocre balsamic taste much better, and left it cooking on the stove while I pondered how to turn it into a sauce, which I eventually did by adding maybe two tablespoons of honey and a little more water and letting the whole mess boil and thicken into a stickily delicious glaze. The glaze was done after another minute or two, after which I returned the beans to the pan, where a quick toss coated them nicely (and got the pan pretty clean, too, although I still hurried it over to the sink to soak after I finished putting the beans back in their serving bowl).
I call this latest incarnation of you Garlicky Green Beans in Balsamic-Honey Glaze, and I'm thinking of eating it with a garnish of toasted nuts, perhaps on a bed of salad greens, maybe even as part of a salade Niçoise if I'm feeling fancy later. I'm also thinking it might be time for me to plant more of you in my garden, because making happy little crunching noises while I pull weeds and tie up tomatoes ranks right up there with David Bowie.
Thanks for everything, green beans. You're great.
Love,
-Tracy
Published 21 July 2006; last edited 9 September 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
21 July 2006
21 May 2006
33. Hail
Dear hail,
Please for to not have just completely destroyed my garden, okay? As always, you came and went quickly, but I'm not used to hailstones being much bigger than peas, and many of these were as big as grapes, so it was actually a little scary for a few minutes there. Also, I definitely wasn't into the part of the storm where it would have hurt to go outside and so I had to just stand and look helplessly out the window while my poor little sunflowers got bent in half. Finally, you were loud enough to make at least one of the cats go hide under the bed, so I hope you're happy with yourself. Me, I'll only be happy with you if my plants recover. Dang. Maybe I should build those cold frames after all.
Love,
-Tracy
Title abridged 1 December 2011.
Please for to not have just completely destroyed my garden, okay? As always, you came and went quickly, but I'm not used to hailstones being much bigger than peas, and many of these were as big as grapes, so it was actually a little scary for a few minutes there. Also, I definitely wasn't into the part of the storm where it would have hurt to go outside and so I had to just stand and look helplessly out the window while my poor little sunflowers got bent in half. Finally, you were loud enough to make at least one of the cats go hide under the bed, so I hope you're happy with yourself. Me, I'll only be happy with you if my plants recover. Dang. Maybe I should build those cold frames after all.
Love,
-Tracy
Title abridged 1 December 2011.
27 January 2006
27. Flowers
Dear flowers,
While I prefer you outside, as part of living plants, even the chant of "look what's dying in a vase in your living room!" from the most sarcastic parts of my brain isn't enough to stop me feeling like you brighten things up a bit even indoors. And while those morbid thoughts are more than enough to stop me ever buying you (also I'm a cheapskate) I've still been known to scavenge through the dumpster by my work when the florist next door gets rid of the less-than-perfect specimens of you at the end of the day, and this week it's paid off with four or five very happy days of thinking, "Yes, they may be dead but they're still nicer here than in a dumpster and unlike the flower place I'll compost them afterwards."
So thanks for being pretty even as you slowly die in my living room, flowers, and though I can't promise I won't cut any of you from my garden this year, I think I can keep it down to a reasonable minimum. Just a few of you are often enough to make me smile.
Love,
-Tracy
Title abridged 1 December 2011.
While I prefer you outside, as part of living plants, even the chant of "look what's dying in a vase in your living room!" from the most sarcastic parts of my brain isn't enough to stop me feeling like you brighten things up a bit even indoors. And while those morbid thoughts are more than enough to stop me ever buying you (also I'm a cheapskate) I've still been known to scavenge through the dumpster by my work when the florist next door gets rid of the less-than-perfect specimens of you at the end of the day, and this week it's paid off with four or five very happy days of thinking, "Yes, they may be dead but they're still nicer here than in a dumpster and unlike the flower place I'll compost them afterwards."
So thanks for being pretty even as you slowly die in my living room, flowers, and though I can't promise I won't cut any of you from my garden this year, I think I can keep it down to a reasonable minimum. Just a few of you are often enough to make me smile.
Love,
-Tracy
Title abridged 1 December 2011.
28 July 2005
20. Plants
Dear plants,
You're really weird. I mean that in a good way, though, and on all kinds of levels. For one thing, many of you are delicious — or maybe I'm overestimating and it's just some of you; I'm not sure. I should probably find out what percentage of you are edible in some way, just to satisfy my geekish curiosity, but I digress. Many of you are also quite beautiful, and as I learn more about you I'm developing a greater appreciation for your different kinds of beauty, which in turn makes the world a cooler place to be just because I can look at you and smile just about everywhere I go. You're weird in big and loud as well as small and quiet ways, all of which add up to something strange and wonderful. Plants, you reaffirm my belief that if there's any life in the universe beyond the planet Earth, it's quite possible we silly human animals won't be able to recognize it even if we found it. I mean, you're so different from life as I understand it in my silly human animal ways. It boggles my mind how I can cut big pieces off you to eat, or just because they're in my way, and you still live! Sometimes you even grow back stronger and healthier than before! Wow!
True, I wasn't always this enthusiastic about you. I'm still not much into biology on a microscopic anatomical level, what with all the chemistry that goes on there — yuck. But since buying a house and trying to tend all the plants on the property and starting a garden in which to grow vegetables to eat, I'm starting to think that maybe botanists aren't all that on crack, after all. Now granted, I'm deeply fascinated by my bean and tomato and spaghetti squash plants and so on because if all goes well they give me food (or they already have, hurray!) but I can see how even non-food plants might hold similar fascinations, for sentimental or aesthetic reasons perhaps, or just geekery. Roses are pretty intriguing, I gotta say — most of the bewilderment I expressed earlier at plants that respond well to even my ruthless and possibly incompetent pruning is based on my experiences with the rose bushes in my front yard. Their rhododendron colleagues are even more of a mystery to me, but I don't have as much of a use for them, though that might just be because they confuse and bewilder me, I'm honestly not sure.
Plants! You are so amazing! Before I forget, I should express my gratitude to you for producing the oxygen I breathe as a byproduct of photosynthesis, which is about as miraculous as anything else I can think of, and about as full of scary chemistry too, all at once. I had to study that mysterious process and the one we both share, respiration, in high school, but fortunately I've forgotten most of it since then so it's okay except how maybe it stopped me from learning more about you for a while, during which time I missed out on so much joy and wonder.
The good news of course is that I'm back to the joy and wonder of learning (albeit in a more first-hand and less textbook manner) and planting, and watching in awe as you grow, plants. Symbiosis rocks, even if I'm really misusing that term and trying to stretch it into a metaphor for talking about how all life is interconnected, even life that's completely foreign to my understanding of how anything works. You rock, too, plants, and I'm not just saying that because I eat so very many of you. Um, I hope you're okay with that last, although since I'm pretty sure you can't see this, let alone read it, I'm not sure how I could ever hear back from you either way. Sorry about that. And finally, while you sometimes seem alien enough to have come from other planets, and I think it would be pretty cool if you had, I'm mostly just happy knowing that the Earth is full of things that are just as freaky as I am, no matter where any of us came from.
Love,
-Tracy
Started in the early AM hours of 27 July 2005, published 28 July 2005, updated 4 February 2006 with a link to this Dinosaur Comic, because I could not resist. Title abridged 1 December 2011, last updated 6 June 2014.
You're really weird. I mean that in a good way, though, and on all kinds of levels. For one thing, many of you are delicious — or maybe I'm overestimating and it's just some of you; I'm not sure. I should probably find out what percentage of you are edible in some way, just to satisfy my geekish curiosity, but I digress. Many of you are also quite beautiful, and as I learn more about you I'm developing a greater appreciation for your different kinds of beauty, which in turn makes the world a cooler place to be just because I can look at you and smile just about everywhere I go. You're weird in big and loud as well as small and quiet ways, all of which add up to something strange and wonderful. Plants, you reaffirm my belief that if there's any life in the universe beyond the planet Earth, it's quite possible we silly human animals won't be able to recognize it even if we found it. I mean, you're so different from life as I understand it in my silly human animal ways. It boggles my mind how I can cut big pieces off you to eat, or just because they're in my way, and you still live! Sometimes you even grow back stronger and healthier than before! Wow!
True, I wasn't always this enthusiastic about you. I'm still not much into biology on a microscopic anatomical level, what with all the chemistry that goes on there — yuck. But since buying a house and trying to tend all the plants on the property and starting a garden in which to grow vegetables to eat, I'm starting to think that maybe botanists aren't all that on crack, after all. Now granted, I'm deeply fascinated by my bean and tomato and spaghetti squash plants and so on because if all goes well they give me food (or they already have, hurray!) but I can see how even non-food plants might hold similar fascinations, for sentimental or aesthetic reasons perhaps, or just geekery. Roses are pretty intriguing, I gotta say — most of the bewilderment I expressed earlier at plants that respond well to even my ruthless and possibly incompetent pruning is based on my experiences with the rose bushes in my front yard. Their rhododendron colleagues are even more of a mystery to me, but I don't have as much of a use for them, though that might just be because they confuse and bewilder me, I'm honestly not sure.
Plants! You are so amazing! Before I forget, I should express my gratitude to you for producing the oxygen I breathe as a byproduct of photosynthesis, which is about as miraculous as anything else I can think of, and about as full of scary chemistry too, all at once. I had to study that mysterious process and the one we both share, respiration, in high school, but fortunately I've forgotten most of it since then so it's okay except how maybe it stopped me from learning more about you for a while, during which time I missed out on so much joy and wonder.
The good news of course is that I'm back to the joy and wonder of learning (albeit in a more first-hand and less textbook manner) and planting, and watching in awe as you grow, plants. Symbiosis rocks, even if I'm really misusing that term and trying to stretch it into a metaphor for talking about how all life is interconnected, even life that's completely foreign to my understanding of how anything works. You rock, too, plants, and I'm not just saying that because I eat so very many of you. Um, I hope you're okay with that last, although since I'm pretty sure you can't see this, let alone read it, I'm not sure how I could ever hear back from you either way. Sorry about that. And finally, while you sometimes seem alien enough to have come from other planets, and I think it would be pretty cool if you had, I'm mostly just happy knowing that the Earth is full of things that are just as freaky as I am, no matter where any of us came from.
Love,
-Tracy
Started in the early AM hours of 27 July 2005, published 28 July 2005, updated 4 February 2006 with a link to this Dinosaur Comic, because I could not resist. Title abridged 1 December 2011, last updated 6 June 2014.
06 June 2005
18. Rain
Dear rain,
Don't get me wrong. I know you're good for my garden, especially the carrots I thinned out and the brand shiny new green zebra and yellow brandywine tomatoes I planted today. I'm down with not having to water my plants with the garden hose, although I'm still going to mulch them lovingly with grass clippings in an effort to retain water (and as an added bonus, keep down weeds). But couldn't you wait with starting till I'm at work instead of making it hard for me to get there on my bike? I would've liked to keep pruning my roses and make a run to the library, too... but I'll settle for the fact that you seem to be slowing down a bit. Hold that thought! Thank you!
Love,
-Tracy
Title abridged 1 December 2011.
Don't get me wrong. I know you're good for my garden, especially the carrots I thinned out and the brand shiny new green zebra and yellow brandywine tomatoes I planted today. I'm down with not having to water my plants with the garden hose, although I'm still going to mulch them lovingly with grass clippings in an effort to retain water (and as an added bonus, keep down weeds). But couldn't you wait with starting till I'm at work instead of making it hard for me to get there on my bike? I would've liked to keep pruning my roses and make a run to the library, too... but I'll settle for the fact that you seem to be slowing down a bit. Hold that thought! Thank you!
Love,
-Tracy
Title abridged 1 December 2011.
19 January 2005
4. Dogs
Dear dogs,
I know you can't read this, but would you please stop shitting in my yard? I want to turn it into a garden someday, and I'd really like to grow edible food in it, so yeah. Quit it already!
And while I'm dreaming, if you could please tell your people that it might be better to take you out for a walk, like for instance to the dog park less than half a mile north of my house, instead of just letting you out at night to roam the streets unsupervised, so you're completely free to shit in my yard because you couldn't read a "no pooping" sign even if I posted one? That would be great.
Love,
-Tracy
Started 8 November 2004, last updated 19 January 2005
I know you can't read this, but would you please stop shitting in my yard? I want to turn it into a garden someday, and I'd really like to grow edible food in it, so yeah. Quit it already!
And while I'm dreaming, if you could please tell your people that it might be better to take you out for a walk, like for instance to the dog park less than half a mile north of my house, instead of just letting you out at night to roam the streets unsupervised, so you're completely free to shit in my yard because you couldn't read a "no pooping" sign even if I posted one? That would be great.
Love,
-Tracy
Started 8 November 2004, last updated 19 January 2005
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