Happiness Is a Bucketful of Beans
Tomatoes are always the superstar of the summer garden, but we didn't have anywhere near enough time to make that happen this year. The summer vegetable we did manage to sneak into our fall garden?
Green beans! These are Blue Lake, a bush variety (meaning they don't need to climb poles or trellises, but kind of flop on the ground in a relatively compact way). We planted them the first week of August, and this weekend (two months later) we were able to harvest a whole mess of them (this bucket is about 1/4 of them). First, we had a bunch for supper, straight-up steamed and brought to the table all summery and as-is:
After supper, though, I went to work preserving them for later in the fall. These are my Thanksgiving beans, you see. I like them frozen much better than canned, and I prepped them according to the Ball Blue Book, which has never steered us wrong.
1. Rinse and drain, then snap off the stems and the little strings at the bottom (if the bean hasn't completely filled out).
2. Blanch for 3 minutes. All this means is that you get a pot boiling and dump in the beans for 3 minutes.
3. The other part of blanching is that you have to stop them from cooking right after that three minutes is up so they don't get mushy and overdone. So during the boiling part, get a mixing bowl of ice water ready. Then drain the beans over the sink and dump them into the ice water bath. Swish them around until they are cool.
4. After the beans are cool, drain them again, and pat dry with a towel. Then they are ready for a freezer bag.
This doesn't look like much, but keep in mind that we ate a fair amount for dinner. Also, I picked a lot more today and processed them, so now this bag is full of beans, frozen and ready to break out for Thanksgiving dinner.
Green beans! These are Blue Lake, a bush variety (meaning they don't need to climb poles or trellises, but kind of flop on the ground in a relatively compact way). We planted them the first week of August, and this weekend (two months later) we were able to harvest a whole mess of them (this bucket is about 1/4 of them). First, we had a bunch for supper, straight-up steamed and brought to the table all summery and as-is:
After supper, though, I went to work preserving them for later in the fall. These are my Thanksgiving beans, you see. I like them frozen much better than canned, and I prepped them according to the Ball Blue Book, which has never steered us wrong.
1. Rinse and drain, then snap off the stems and the little strings at the bottom (if the bean hasn't completely filled out).
2. Blanch for 3 minutes. All this means is that you get a pot boiling and dump in the beans for 3 minutes.
3. The other part of blanching is that you have to stop them from cooking right after that three minutes is up so they don't get mushy and overdone. So during the boiling part, get a mixing bowl of ice water ready. Then drain the beans over the sink and dump them into the ice water bath. Swish them around until they are cool.
4. After the beans are cool, drain them again, and pat dry with a towel. Then they are ready for a freezer bag.
This doesn't look like much, but keep in mind that we ate a fair amount for dinner. Also, I picked a lot more today and processed them, so now this bag is full of beans, frozen and ready to break out for Thanksgiving dinner.
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