My favourite variety of beans at the moment – brown seeded snake beans. So long as I can keep water up to them, they don’t mind how hot it gets, and they bear really prolifically over a month or more. They make a great salad, blanched then dressed with a balsamic olive oil garlic dressing while they are still warm. Or, like this, lightly sauteed with lots of garlic, then…
The thing I love about snake beans is that you pick all these today, and tomorrow there’s the same amount again. And the other thing I love about snake beans is cutting them into finger lengths, lightly blanching, and dressing with a garlic-olive oil-balsamic-soy-honey dressing while they are hot.
There have been several disparate themes mulling around vying for attention as my focus for 2013. I’ve been thinking about packaging, community, and how sharing food is so central, and I’ve been thinking about the conversation that is surfacing in permaculture circles lately about the misconception that permaculture is about self-sufficiency
The Tuesday Night Vego Challenge this week had to feature snake beans. Now I have them coming on, the poor old Blue Lakes and Purple Kings have dropped right out of favour, left to mature for seed for storing. Snake beans are more tropical than most bean varieties, adapted to the tropical summer monsoon belt. They like hot wet weather.