Remember all those really cute pictures of birds in the bean patch? Yes? Well, there they were, enjoying the grasshoppers and other bugs when Bigfoot invaded their little Garden of Eden, scattering them and forcing them to hunt in other parts of the field.
Sorry. It just made me laugh when I saw the trail camera had caught me out in the garden picking beans.
There were quite a few ready to pick (the bean plants were finally able to stay ahead of the marauding mice). I harvested far more than we were able to use for dinner, so I took them home to process for a taste of summer in January.
It always amazes me that when I blanche purple beans, they magically turn green. I looked up the reason why that happens (insatiable curiosity...) and the story goes like this: the color is created by anthocyanins in the plant - the same stuff that gives us purple cabbage, purple cauliflower and other vegetables that range from blueish purple all the way to magenta, depending on the soil's PH level. It's a pigment that is very sensitive to heat, so blanching or boiling will cause the plant cells to break down and release the colorful anthocyanins into the more neutral PH water bath, leaving behind the green chlorophyll which the purple had simply masked. The water from the blanching process had a definite blueish tint to it when I was finished, since that's where all the anthocyanins ended up. (Bean tea! Does anyone else out there drink it? My mother always shared it with us whenever she cooked green, purple or yellow beans and we all still love it.)
In any event, I now have a nice stack of (green) purple beans in my freezer to enjoy through the winter months.
No comments:
Post a Comment