Life is like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today might burn you tomorrow. — Wikimedia photo
Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm. ~Ambrose Bierce
Green Beans and Jalapenos
Tucson’s Market on the Move, a program in which good produce destined for the landfill for a variety of reasons, was at my downstairs neighbors’ church this past week. They bought the regular: 60 pounds of food for $10.
Of course that’s too much for one family to use before the vegetables go bad, so, I was the recipient of a couple of zucchinis, a dozen or so tomatoes, about a dozen large jalapenos and a handful of green beans, that looked as if they needed to go directly into the pot or they would spoil.
Laughter is the valve on the pressure cooker of life. Either you laugh and suffer, or you got your beans or brains on the ceiling. – Wikipedia photo
I seldom eat green beans. Frozen ones taste like tough twigs, canned ones taste like mushy scum, and I usually overlook them when I’m buying fresh veggies. When I saw these fresh green beans, my mouth suddenly watered for the green beans my Southern grandmother used to cook, back when people weren’t so concerned about salt and fat in their diets. My mouth watered. .
So it was that I cleaned and put all the beans, about enough for two people, in a pot with water, salt and two slices of cut-up bacon, and then boiled the mixture until the water had almost evaporated and the beans were soft, not at all like the crisp, little cooked veggies I normally prefer.
I don’t know whether it was thinking about my grandmother’s kitchen or the flavor of green beans the way she cooked them, but I felt I had died and gone to heaven and was sitting across the table from the grandmother I had lost when I was 10. I devoured both helpings of the beans and wished I had more.
I later stuffed the jalapenos with a cream-cheese ham mixture, after the pain of cleaning out the seeds and halving them – my eyes burned and my throat choked up painfully during the process and quite a while afterwards – but the result was worth it.
I made spaghetti sauce with the tomatoes, and stuffed the zucchini with mushrooms, cheddar cheese and bread crumbs. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned on my blog how much I love cooking – and eating.
Blog pick of the day. Check it out.
Bean Pat: Foggy and Frosty http://tinyurl.com/mrkohbt Winter art from one of my favorite places on earth, Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
Pat Bean's blog 