Hey wow! My pole beans are just a little famous! 2 August 2007 5:54 pm
Posted by Tracy in : cooking,CSA,eating,garden,news,pictures,seasonality , trackbackHoly cats! One of my garden pictures is up on Kitchen Garden International! The front page, even, at least for awhile!
It’s being used to illustrate a reprint of a Washington Post article about out-of-control pole beans, which is of course entirely appropriate. I’m all a-flutter! And no matter what that article says about bush beans being better-behaved, never let it be said that I don’t completely adore my pole beans, out-of-control or otherwise, because I do — I love them very, very much.
I planted scarlet runner beans for their lovely flowers alone, and on Tuesday I finally remembered to weigh my green bean haul for the first time this season: just under three pounds of Blue Lake green beans, which isn’t counting last week’s treats, or everything I’ve eaten while picking ever since getting back to the States. Okay, there were a handful of bush beans in there as well, delicious Maxibels to be exact, but I have yet to plant enough of them or the fancy Dragon’s Tongue heirloom bush beans to bring much more than a handful inside at a time, which is both wonderful and sad, because while I love green beans raw, they are so good in so many dishes, too! So I plant pole beans, and get great joyful piles of delicious green goodness for weeks on end. (As the KGI/WP article points out, if you like your gardens a little less manically exuberant, bush beans tend to appear all at the same time, which can be a little more manageable — sort of like determinate varieties of tomatoes as opposed to the big, crazy indeterminate heirlooms I so love. But my preferences were probably clear enough already, and anyway I digress.)
So far this summer I have eaten pounds of green beans from my CSA and home garden: in a spicy Asian-inspired marinade, with toasted walnuts and a balsamic-honey glaze, and of course raw, often without bothering to bring them inside. Dilly beans and salade Niçoise are in my not-too distant future, oh yes, and I look forward to posting recipes for these and other summer savories. Yay gardening!
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debbie
