I think Harriet would eat all the green beans in the world, if she had half a chance. Frozen, cooked, raw, it doesn’t matter, they’re all good to her.
Tag: food
Green Beans
The house is starting to smell like green beans. Miss Brown approves. The entire time I was snapping beans, she sat under my feet, cleaning up every dropped piece. I think she might have eaten the entire bag of beans, if I’d let her.
Comfort Food
Like most people, I think, I have a whole list of foods that I think of as “comfort foods.” Mashed potatoes, hot chocolate with toast, soup, etc. I was thinking about it last week, and realized that when it really comes down to it, no matter how much I think I might want one of the classics, I almost always end up making either buttered popcorn or buttered noodles. Apparently I can blame my dad for that, because those were the two things he used to make when I was little.
And that makes me think of fried eggs. No, really. I have always had a complicated relationship with eggs. I hate them scrambled, and only a few years ago learned to enjoy them that way, with cheese and lots of veggies. Sort of like a messy omelet. I don’t like hard yolks or whites that are not thoroughly cooked. I do like them hard-boiled, especially if they are dill pickled. I also like runny fried egg yolks, but not so much the whites.
Which brings me to something I had completely forgotten about, but was recently reminded of. I have always eaten fried eggs (over medium and unbroken, please, with no crispy bits), whites first, with buttered toast. Cut off a bite-sized section of white, place it on toast, and nom. When the white is gone, quarter the yolk, place each section on a piece of toast and nom. Mop up the spilled yolk with the rest of the toast.
I learned that from my dad, too. I remember, when I was about four years old, sitting at the kitchen table, refusing to eat my egg and toast because the whites were disgusting. He told me to eat the white first, with the toast, then the yolk, which I liked, would be my reward. To this day, that’s how I eat fried eggs.
Green Beans
As I was snapping beans, occasionally one would fall on the floor. Miss Brown hoovered them up as quickly as they fell.
Red Peppers
My green peppers are turning red. I’ve also (finally!) got a couple of fairly good sized ripe tomatoes, and have discovered that they are sweet. Like candy. Yum. And the texture is just amazing–fine-grained and juicy. I’ve been eating store-bought tomatoes for so long, I’d forgotten what a real tomato tasted like.
Camera Test #3
Apparently the peppers I started from seed (as opposed to the ones I got as seedlings from a coworker) were from a variety pack. There are purple peppers, long green ones, and yellow ones. Hopefully they’re all mild. Surely I would not have bought hot pepper seeds?
Camera-wise, the shots in this post are all untouched, aside from cropping. Those in the last post were pretty heavily edited.
Chess
When we were little, my brother and I would play chess for hours on end. Usually, this was accompanied by a big bowl of home-grown green beans, cooked with ham, onions, and potatoes, and slices of fried homemade bread to dip in the juice. The two things are permanently intertwined in my brain, so that whenever I think of playing chess, I can almost taste green beans with fried bread.
This is all by way of saying that I just recently noticed that my computer came with a chess game. I hadn’t played since I was a kid, so at first I couldn’t remember the movements of all the pieces. I played it a few times, though, and even managed to win a couple of games (on the super-duper easy level), but now I’m craving green beans and potatoes with fried homemade bread.
Summer Brownies
It’s too hot to turn on the oven, but I was craving brownies, so I thought I’d re-visit the thought of making them in the microwave. If nothing else, this is way cheaper and healthier than those microwavable brownie bowls from Betty Crocker.
This is basically my regular brownie recipe, halved, with a couple of tweaks.
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa (dark is best!)
pinch of salt*
4 Tbls olive oil*
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla (or do what I do, and just slosh a little bit into the bowl)
Add the dry ingredients together and mix thoroughly, then add the wet and mix. It will be fairly stiff (half-way between cake batter and cookie dough in consistency). Spoon into a shallow, greased soup bowl. (I used the left-over olive oil that had collected in the bottom of the measuring cup.)
Microwave for about two minutes. This is the only tricky part, since every microwave is different. If you don’t nuke it long enough, it’ll be too gooey. Not that I believe there’s such a thing as too gooey. Too long, and it will burn, and that would be a sad thing, indeed. My microwave seems to be permanently stuck on Chernobyl, so two minutes works well for me. This also assumes your microwave has a turntable. If not, you may want to rotate 1/4 turn every 30 seconds or so.
* The original recipe calls for melted butter. I didn’t feel like melting it, so I used olive oil. If you use olive oil or unsalted butter, you’ll want to add a pinch of salt. If you use salted butter, omit the salt.
Baby Tomatoes
I’m really looking forward to fried green tomatoes, so I hope nothing eats these guys before they get big enough to pick.
Baby Pepper
Isn’t it cute? It’s about the size of a pencil eraser. (I’m still a little in shock that real, live food is actually growing in my garden.)
red paper boat 