Saturday, April 18, 2009

Green Beans in Oil

When I was an undergraduate I spent about 7 weeks in Greece. The food was fabulous, and I was especially fond of a dish of green beans cooked in a tomato sauce. For years I tried to replicate the recipe with no success, not until I bought a copy of The Complete Middle East Cookbook by Tess Malos. In the Lebanon/Syria/Jordon section she has a recipe called Green Beans in Oil, which closely approximates the beans I had in Greece. And I do like them so much, I could make a meal of just these beans and a good loaf of bread. Except in the summer, when a fresh ear of corn and a fresh tomato (with that loaf of bread) makes a pretty good dinner, too.

Managed to do a lot of gardening the last two days. Prepared all the existing beds for planting, put new strawberry plants in one of the strawberry pots:

and planted a new thyme plant in the herb garden (the dog dug up the last one).

The peas are growing,

except in one row for some reason, so I planted arugula there.

So the plan for this year is: replace the two dead blueberry bushes with live ones, like this, but maybe bigger;
try carrots again here (I worked the soil so maybe I'll get real carrots and not little stubs);

put in a three sisters garden (corn, squash and beans); plant tomatoes (Ramapos this year, if I can get my hands on them); plant basil, parsley and dill in the herb garden; put cherry tomatoes in the upside down planter; and put hot peppers in the window box by the back door. We are in the process of opening up new beds (maybe next weekend, weather permitting), and in them I'll plant sweet peppers and maybe some cucumbers. (I'm avoiding members of the cabbage family because they always seem to be eaten by some kind of bug, and we aren't big fans of eggplant, zuchinni and summer squash so they're out.)

DH took down a dying tree near the driveway, and although I'd really like to replace it with an apple tree, it looks like that won't be happening. So I have to figure out what to put over there.

Could just fill the area with blueberry bushes, or maybe a different variety of tomatoes (one can never have too many tomatoes). Two other bushes along the side of the house will soon be taken down and I'm thinking of replacing them with hazelnuts, something I've wanted to plant since we bought the house. Have to look into that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How about a picture with the stump removed?

Patricia said...

Okay, I'll post a new photo soon.