Pole Beans. Not your average canned vegetable.

Pole Beans. Not your average canned vegetable.

The morning's haul.

My children have been gone all week. It’s been odd. (Will leave that onion to peel in another post.) 

With all this free time on my hands, after prying myself out of bed in the morning, I get in the garden and poke around. 

Here are the goodies I found yesterday. 

I took all those green beans — pole beans, snap beans, whatever you call them — stringed ’em, snapped ’em and put them in the crock pot with a bit of water, salt, bacon and the extra special ingredient, a good sprinkling of sugar. 

Cooked them till they were good and mushy as all southern veggies are supposed to be. 

This was done at the suggestion of Michelle as she healed my torn-up backside the day before. During a most wonderful massage at the hands of Michelle, we talked of our gardens. She mentioned fixing up a bunch of beans in the crock pot (she didn’t add sugar, that was my addition).  Her husband and mother LOVED them, but when she tried them…Eeww! Michelle didn’t like them — at all. 

“They didn’t taste like canned green beans, did they?” 

“No ma’am, they sure didn’t.” 

I got it. There is something so very comforting about canned greens beans. Opening a can of green beans, sniffing that wonderful scent, transports me to school lunches on plastic green trays (with four compartments) at Audubon Elementary. 

Makes me happy. 

But so does the taste of pole beans stewing in their own juice, salt and bit of bacon all afternoon. 

Yum. When those beans have come out of your very own garden ~  that’s just plain good eating. 

And rather surprising for me. In fact, the whole gardening, cooking thing  is quite miraculous where I’m concerned.  Not that I’m complaining being the recipient of a minor miracle, especially one that tastes so good.