Ich, who like them at all? Texture of rubber and the flavor of grass
Canned green beans are about as bad as it gets. Excepting potted meat product, I can't think of much worse.
French-cut, canned green beans are worse than the regular ones.
Wracking my brains to think of something you could do with canned green beans that would make them edible and coming up empty. And I love fresh green beans.
3. Fuck, he's a connoisseur of this shit!
Canned green beans are about as bad as it gets.
Canned asparagus.
Green beans are an acceptable food. Most other beans are bullshit. See here.
Nonetheless, canned green beans are horrible, and non-canned ones are like the world's easiest thing to find and cook, and they don't even go bad in the fridge that quickly.
Canned asparagus.
Can make edible soup with a decent stock. I wouldn't substitute canned beans if my stock had been made fresh by Ferran Adria.
5: No. It's knowledge from school lunch rooms.
I personally am a big fan of frozen green beans. But canned green beans are pukey.
I have no problem with canned green beans. Like Moby, I prefer the regular over the french-cut.
I can't think of much worse.
Canned peas.
I'm on board with hating on canned green beans, with one important exception. Home canned green beans (in glass jars, not steel cans) can be excellent, especially when prepared in the traditional southern style (cooked to toothless softness in the company of ham hocks).
12: I was going to say something about how I was sure that the Unfogged consensus was that all canned vegetables are vile and inedible. Then it occurred to me that there was such a thing as artisanally canned vegetables, which would doubtless find favor among the Unfoggetarians.
I can eat canned peas, if I have enough butter. I can't eat canned beans.
When you're saving ONE CAN, you're saving TOUCANS.
I'm with KR on canned peas. Definitely much less appetizing than canned green beans, which manage to retain at least some semblance of a solid texture.
Canned chipotles in adobo sauce are nice. I will eat canned chickpeas in a salad or a soup. Every other canned thing is usually bad.
Other than tomatoes, I can't think of a vegetable that is well served by canning.
14 is right. But I would never eat any canned vegetable (exc. tomatoes) that I could get frozen. The superiority of fresh over frozen is in many cases less clear to me.
That said, if I couldn't afford a freezer, I'd buy canned beans out of season and think of something to do with them.
With enough Bacon Salt, I can eat any canned vegetable. Of course, I'd probably eat my shoe with enough Bacon Salt on it.
I was about to say something about tomatoes being good canned, too, but then I got stuck wondering if I was going to embarrass myself.
16: I do have vague bad memories of canned peas, although I can't remember when I ate them.
Corn from a can holds up okay. I don't really mind chick peas or black beans either.
20: Do you think Charlie Chaplin had Bacon Salt?
I never cook with fresh tomatoes. It's too much of a pain in the ass for too little gain over canned.
Also, I always use canned black beans, red bean, and kidney beans.
Me too on canned garbanzo, black, red, kidney, navy, etc.
Canned green beans are great, if by "canned" you mean really "jarred" and they are spicy and pickled.
People who are suggesting bacon/ham stock to rescue canned veg. are right, but it's a last resort, and it doesn't help AWB (for example).
21: How can you be embarrassed? You're always right!
Black beans and pinto beans are good from a can, but I don't think of them as vegetables, I think of them as legumes, even though it seems that green beans and peas have equal claim to the title.
27: Someone will now point out that dried beans are cheaper. If you ate beans every day of the year, you could have almost $20 if you used dried beans and didn't value your time at more than 6 cents and hour.
28: I was going to ask if pickling counted as canning. That changes everything.
The superiority of fresh over frozen is in many cases less clear to me
Careful. That sort of talk can get you ostracized around here.
I do usually buy dry beans, because they're both cheaper (as Moby points out) and lighter (a major concern if you walk to the grocery store) than canned. I'm sure they taste better too, but I haven't noticed the difference.
35. I live in a city. I have always lived in cities. I love fresh peas, but I treasure the memory of the occasion I bought 5lb of the things of a market and weighed the shelled peas at 10oz. OK, I'll buy fresh for a garnish, or to make a special dish but although our household income is nearly twice the national average in spite of me retiring I'm damned if I can afford fresh peas at that rate day to day.
It has come to my attention that some people hate Hitler.
Oh yes, some canned tomatoes are fine, of course. I really do prefer fresh for almost everything when tomatoes are ripe, but when they're not, canned will be fine.
Frozen peas are fine, as is frozen corn. Canned corn is acceptable for, say, a black bean salad.
On the true legume front, canned black beans are really not remotely like those freshly soaked and cooked, which don't take very long to soak and cook, and are cheaper. And much better, since they create a broth.
Canned green beans I don't see any use for. Is there any nutritional value there at all?
I personally really like canned tomatoes for long-cooked preparations and the like. Fresh tomatoes are, of course, awesome, but they are so bad when they're bad that I'd prefer a mediocre canned tomato over a mediocre fresh tomato.
To me there is kind of an culinary uncanny valley thing that goes on with canned vegetables. LeSueur peas and canned asparagus are transformed completely enough from their original state that I regard them as completely different vegetative-based food substances enjoyed or loathed on their own merits or lack thereof; they started as peas and asparagus and are now something else. The same thing does not hold true for beans and corn, they are enough like the original that I contrast them with fresh or frozen and find them wanting.
*More like peanuts are to peanut butter.
39: I thought retired British people had allotments and were made to grow their own vegetables while telling long stories about how the NHS is making them wait for the new glass eye.
Canned corn is acceptable for, say, a black bean salad.
Racist.
I was going to mention home-canned (jarred) green beans, but KR beat me to it. When my mom went back to work when I was in 4th grade, she explained to my sister and me that we were going to start buying canned green beans from the store, and we would just have to get used to them.
I just yesterday made a sauce with very good fresh tomatoes (wanted to use up a bunch before our vegetable delivery came again today), and while it was better than sauce from canned tomatoes, it wasn't better enough to make it worth the work.
I could eat a grip of canned green beans before I could choke down a single spoonful of canned peas.
32: No, here we start extolling Rancho Gordo dried beans, which aren't cheaper.
If you get the canned mix, you could pick and choose.
40: It has come to my attention that some people hate Hitler.
48: Huh. Do you ordinarily eat fresh peas? Because those just never cross my path, to speak of. They're great when they do, but they're a rarity. Canned green beans I am not willing to choke down.
15: I loved that comment because I hate that little PSA or whatever you're supposed to call the commercials from underwriters.
52: If peas are on the menu, they're usually frozen, although fresh peas are of course to be preferred.
One of Frowner's relatives, whom I believe has been mentioned here in the past, was an ad executive in Chi in the '50s, when they were first introducing frozen peas. Her slogan idea, which may not have been used, but which certainly should have been, was: "Many will be culled, but few shall be frozen."
Tinned sweetcorn is nicer than frozen. I've only ever eaten it fresh on the cob, and that seems like an expensive way to get a pile of sweetcorn with your dinner.
I use tinned tomatoes nearly always. Tinned beans (legume types, not green ones) when I haven't planned ahead, dried ones if I do.
And I just a couple of days ago bought a bag of frozen green beans for the first time, so I am encouraged to see heebie approves of them. Haven't used any yet.
I'm on board with hating on canned green beans, with one important exception. Home canned green beans (in glass jars, not steel cans) can be excellent, especially when prepared in the traditional southern style (cooked to toothless softness in the company of ham hocks).
KR is correct.
And I prefer frozen peas to fresh, because I don't really like peas and so I always buy frozen petits pois, whereas fresh peas are all big and chewy and flavoury.
I've only ever eaten it fresh on the cob, and that seems like an expensive way to get a pile of sweetcorn with your dinner.
It's very cheap in the right season. Just buy it from some guy selling out of the back of a truck.
On the true legume front, canned black beans are really not remotely like those freshly soaked and cooked, which don't take very long to soak and cook, and are cheaper. And much better, since they create a broth.
Canned black beans (Goya brand only) are a staple in my house. While the quoted remark may be true, making the 15 minute dish take more like 45 minutes is a no-no.
I am addicted to frozen blueberries. Target's are the best.
Yum.
The level of planning involved in cooking with dried beans is beyond me.
Nobody has linked to Rancho Gordo for beans? Where is rtfs?!
Goya brand only
Is that Spanish for "shiksa?"
63:
I agree with Eggplant. I simply dont plan far enough in advance to use dried beans.
64: Read The Fucking Shrub?
But yes, Goya are definitely the best canned frijoles negros.
I used to happily use canned beans, and then somewhere along the way I started thinking they taste gross. It was definitely easier when I liked the canned version.
It's very cheap in the right season. Just buy it from some guy selling out of the back of a truck.
That sounds good. Why haven't I got a corn truck man?
69. Do you have a veg. truck man? They very likely carry corn in season. You could ask them if they don't. Personally couldn't give a shit if I was never in the same room as corn again, but YMMV.
This year corn was $5.50 a dozen, if you were already out in the county.
71: That sounds awfully expensive. I don't know what ears of sweet corn are going for here right now, but at the end of July they were 3/$1 at the grocery store, and 4/$1 at Target.
I did used to get a veg (and fruit) box delivered but there was never enough of what we wanted and too much stuff we didn't and felt like it was too expensive. That was a long time ago - think I'd just had the almost 9 year old. But we had the large box and it wasn't enough for us then. And then a couple of years later I tried some other people where you could say what you wanted but I ended up spending a FORTUNE because I went "ooh yes" to everything so I stopped that.
Keep thinking I should sort it out again ... but I don't know if it's doable moneywise. 5 3/4 adults' worth of fruit and veg costs a lot.
I made dilly beans just last week!
Fresh sweet corn is running between $4 and $6 a dozen here in IL. They usually throw a couple extra in as well to make up for the parts that are being actively devoured by corn worms for good measure.
On a related note, "corn smut" has nothing to do with Rule 34.
5 3/4 adults' worth of fruit and veg costs a lot.
But you're buying it anyway, surely. Are you saying supermarket veg. is so much cheaper even when you factor in your time and fuel getting there, or are you living on gruel.
Tinned sweetcorn is nicer than frozen.
You, madam, are insane, or else English frozen corn is specially made horrible out of spite.
77 - hmmm, well, Jolly Green Giant tinned corn is nicer than frozen which is nicer than cheap tinned.
No, not living on gruel - I walk round the corner to Lidl for fruit and veg, or buy it at one of the many greengrocers also within a few minutes' walk. Some weeks it feels like I am constantly buying fruit. No fruit and veg box is going to routinely give me 20 apples a week, so if I'm topping up anyway, it felt easier just to buy it all myself. It might well be just the buying it all in one go thing with a box that makes it feel costly; I do need to price it all up properly again.
What you have to understand is that horrible, mid-century American foods have their specific roles. To wit:
Canned green beans: tasty with meat and mashed potatoes and gravy; supreme with cubed potatoes and thin pork chops cooked in an electric skillet.
Canned peas: as long as they're LeSeur baby peas, indispensable with roasted fowl, gravy, and stuffing (I'll admit that the last time I tried Stove Top, it was unpalatable).
Canned pineapple: excellent counterpoint to cottage cheese as a breakfast or as an appetizer to Franco-American canned pasta; delicious with canned ham, mashed potatoes, and frozen lima beans.
Canned corn: indicating an easy fly ball to the outfield. Otherwise, RFTS in 77 gets it exactly right.
What the hell is going on in the Midwest? Corn is 10 ears/$1 at the place near Von Wafer. I've recently started cooking dried beans in the crockpot, and like it very much. So long as I can remember to throw them in the night before, I can have a stock of chickpeas on hand the next day. We eat enough of them in hummus or salad to go through a decent sized batch in two or three days.
81: Honestly, I'm suspecting that decent corn simply isn't frozen where you live. Here in the States, decent frozen corn is a close substitute for freshly cut from the ear in most cooked recipes. Obviously not as good in salads* or straight up, but if I'm making some sort of light saute of corn, edamame, and shallots (finished with vinegar), I'd hardly notice the difference. Whereas I wouldn't give canned corn to somebody else's child.
* why o why do Germans put corn kernels in their salads?
Whereas I wouldn't give canned corn to somebody else's child.
Alright Johnny, you can go out and play with Bob, but come home before dark and don't take any canned corn from strange men.
83: I feel like we haven't had our usual cheap corn here this year, but I haven't bought all that much. We definitely haven't had the bumper crops of tomatoes that I'm used to. This is the time of year when I buy like 5# of local tomatoes for $2 and spend the week struggling to use them all. But not this year, for whatever reason. We had a crazy hot July then a mild August; maybe that was the wrong order?
Tinned kidney beans, chickpeas and black-eyed beans, are all fine. But I find many other beans -- haricot, etc -- are mushy and teh ming from a tin. I had some tinned borlotti last week, but wasn't keen.
Other than that, tinned tomatoes are the only veg I'd eat out of a tin. Frozen peas and sweetcorn are nice, though.
Seriously ttaM? No love for the Jolly Green Giant's niblets? Maybe my tastebuds are warped.
Isn't there some categorical difference between green-colored beans and all those in all the other colors? It always tasted like that to me.
Don't British people mean "wheat" by the word "corn"? Or am I wrong.
Anyhow, solve the problem by never eating either one!
tinned borlotti
Madness.
(I have some Rancho Gordo borlotti soaking right now!)
Incidentally, we had a houseful of Scots last weekend (for CA's apotheosis into named chairdom) and I was told that only Americans debase their shortbread with chocolate. But Walkers *sells* it that way! said I. Only in America, came the reply. I am sure that that's bullshit. I like it with candied ginger, and this was deemed right and good.
Canned green beans I don't see any use for.
Green Bean Casserole with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup (plain grey of course, golden mushroom was a disaster) and canned french fried onions. Fresh GBs have too much color and flavour. It's a Thanksgiving tradition going back three generations.
Other than that, always frozen. Back when I was eating anything but meat, fish, eggs, salad & fruit. She thinks the mushrooms and green peppers on a pizza are adequate vegetables.
Frozen peas are also great to wrap around a bum knee.
83: Flood, drought, etc. Very mixed year, weather-wise.
Flood, drought, etc. Very mixed year, weather-wise.
Get used to it.
94: I was raised in Nebraska. It isn't new to me.
||
I was really at the breaking point with rain about five minutes ago, saying to myself that if it rains one more goddamn minute I will fly out of my skin. Then I checked the weather forecast and realized it's predicted to rain for the rest of my life. That's just life now. Rain all the time, until I die. A few weekends of rain, sure, fine, but seriously it's been fucking raining almost constantly since I moved here because of these fucking hurricanes and tropical storms and I'm losing my mind.
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I'm liking the rain right now. Much better than unbearable hotness.
We have had three days in a row under 100°. So glorious.
But it's still muggy! That's the part that's nuts. It was slightly cool last night for the first time, but I've been itchily hot and dehydrated and sun-deprived and it feels like some giant sweaty person is sitting on my head and won't get up.
98: Same here, but per upthread, my tomatoes aren't ripening for shit. Grass repairs from large vehicles mired in the yard are doing great, however.
I drove through a brief but really intense hailstorm today.
100: Yeah, you guys are still stuck in the "tropical" air side of things; your dewpoint is about 10 degrees warmer than Boston or P'burgh.
No rain here, and it's a lot smokier than yesterday. The 10 day doesn't show any either. Might get to 90 tomorrow, in which case I'll knock off early and do some kind of water sport.
86: This is the time of year when I buy like 5# of local tomatoes for $2 and spend the week struggling to use them all. But not this year, for whatever reason. We had a crazy hot July then a mild August; maybe that was the wrong order?
Yes. I heard a fascinating (to me, so bear with me) piece on the radio with a local farmer about crops this year. The deal as she explained it was:
Very hot weather early on, in July in this case, means these things: the nascent fruits run a very real risk of essentially cooking on the vine. This is not only because of the very hot temperatures, but because the plant's leaves ordinarily provide shade to the fruits, and the leaves are likely to shrivel in such heat, exposing the fruits to the sunlight, so they may well sort of cook, whether actually ripened yet or not.
Secondly, very hot temperatures at night, in excess of, say, 85 degrees F, will cause the plant's flowers, which lead to fruit of course, to fall off. !! That explains a great deal about the relatively pathetic yield we've gotten in our own home garden this year. The plants themselves seem normal enough, but ... very little fruit, comparatively. Our pepper plants are just pathetic in yield, tomatoes not a lot better. The cherry tomatoes fared the best.
106.last: Same here on the cherry tomatoes doing best of the tomatoes and peppers doing shit. Garden star this year has been beets. Also first year in forever trying watermelon, and other than the vines taking over freaking everything am actually getting some decent ones (have already picked and eaten one).
This seems like the appropriate thread for the observation that the recent hurricane-driven hysteria at my local grocery store in NJ appears to have been slightly less busy than every single day at this place.
108: picking up a gross of banana leaves and some stale muffins?
I thought the rules was simple enough: anything that needs to be cooked for a relatively long time or with very high temperatures (or that can be turned to mush or liquid, like tomatoes) will work ok in a can. Green veggies don't fall into this category in general, so it's best to avoid the canned ones, unless you just want something on hand for an emergency when you're making a scratch soup.
84: Whereas I wouldn't give canned corn to somebody else's child.
But you'd eat canned pineapple with "Franco-American canned pasta"? Canned pasta? Franco-American? Pineapple? EEWWW.
I can eat junk food with the best of them just fine - but I'm still not going eat pig slop. I'd rather have the canned corn... it's safer.
Anyways, I think canned green beans are bitter and unsalvageable, and canned green beans are lousy but can be salvaged by soaking them in ice water twice, which is ok enough for soup in an emergency. Frozen green peas are good, and the difficulties with fresh green peas are legion so that works. Frozen green beans don't work so well for me - in storage terms it's almost as easy to just buy fresh and the extra work is minor. Frozen Brussel sprouts work very well and are much less work. I just don't use corn much, since it is the (other) evil soil destroyer (I don't use a lot of soy bean stuff either).
Frozen carrots are almost as good as cutting chunks off a rubber tire!
106: Secondly, very hot temperatures at night, in excess of, say, 85 degrees F, will cause the plant's flowers, which lead to fruit of course, to fall off. !!
Yeah. Too much humidity, not enough rain. It's heat trapping here. But my pepper is doing better than the tomatoes which want bud lots of fruit but don't want to grow it very big.
96: That's just life now. Rain all the time, until I die.
Tell me about. Four years of this shit makes me think London must be pretty nifty climate wise. It never rains at a sensible point in the year in particular. It's fucking dark from March til June and then again in the fall and it's hot and humid in the summer. The snow days are the nicest days!
max
['Bleargh.']
It is true that the volume of shelled peas a given volume of fresh English peas produce is often disappointingly small, but one can make a pleasant enough pea broth from the shells.
I've only been to that place once, essear, and contra everyone's stories it was pretty quiet. I also didn't quite get what the big attraction was -- maybe lower prices? I couldn't tell. It had a lot more selection than the Star Market I go to.
To the OP, my grandmother bottled loads of home-grown green beans every summer and the result was disgusting.
re: 88
No, they are fine. Can't remember last time I bought any, though. Several years, probably.
re: 91
I always think of shortbread as just shortbread, and then 'millionaire' shortbread as the kind with caramel and chocolate on top. The latter has a base that's not real shortbread, though. Much looser, and more like a cheesecake biscuit base.
It's not so much the number of people as their tendency to completely block aisles and show no understanding that other people want to move past them, I guess.
87: Garden star this year has been beets.
Hm, we didn't do any root vegetables this year. On the theory that next summer may be similar to this one, maybe it's a good idea to try them. It's just that root veggies are so inexpensive at the store. Still, I'm trying to pay attention for next year.
Garden star this year for us was yellow squash. We had enough yield to be picking them as babies, or adolescents (for tenderness). Oh, and the green beans were awesome. I just like some tomatoes, if you see what I mean. Clearly the smaller tomatoes are a better bet.
We, or rather, the plant itself, achieved two cantaloupes, though one was eaten by a groundhog.
115: the typical knock on the place is that customers tend to arrive in family groups of about forty.
So it's the familiar Boston anti-Catholicism that's behind the slur?
If that's the Market Basket in Somerville I'm thinking of, it's mostly that the parking lot is a hazard. Or at least, once you've acknowledged and addressed the parking lot situation, you get the idea.
it's just that root veggies are so inexpensive at the store.
Yes, plus our clay soils don't generally do that well with root crops. But it's the beets plus the fresh greens that I'm liking, and also beet horseradish sauce. Might even try to till a small deep bed next year and put in some carrots. Also swamped with green beans, but that is a minimum expectation.
The first time I went to that Market Basket, I saw two large women get in a fight over a piece of yucca.
|| At the invitation of my twitter feed, I just watched Papi's recent home run. In a nearly empty stadium. Everyone in Toronto is home tending their gardens?|>
89: Green beans are immature, you couldn't plant them and get another vine. Eventually the green flesh of the shell shrivels to a husk & the inner beans marmorealize.
I've switched my research site to Yolo County. Less traditionally lovely than Santa Cruz, but the farmstands are even better.
Eventually the green flesh of the shell shrivels to a husk & the inner beans marmorealize
... and the sun diseappers behind the moon, as the cosmic ballet continues.
I grew up eating canned vegetables, which is why I sort of associate vegetables, children, and sobbing. I remember feeling startled and uneasy at the unnaturally bright green of frozen peas and beans.
I still don't really care a lot about vegetables, but I had locally grown nectarines this weekend that were the best thing ever.
which is why I sort of associate vegetables, children, and sobbing.
Well, that and the eggplant catapult.
121: Might even try to till a small deep bed next year and put in some carrots
It is true that fresh carrots are to die for, unlike anything you get from a store. That is no joke. Among the root vegetables, I'd go for those first.
Duly noted, thanks.
124: Green beans are immature, you couldn't plant them and get another vine. Eventually the green flesh of the shell shrivels to a husk & the inner beans marmorealize.
What's that? My housemate has set aside a few handfuls of very mature-seeming green beans (i.e. they are lumpy and would have been tough and stringy to eat) to dry, with the intention of harvesting their inner beans for next year. They're husks now. This won't work?
But you'd eat canned pineapple with "Franco-American canned pasta"? Canned pasta? Franco-American? Pineapple? EEWWW.
Honestly, that was pure nostalgia. I haven't had that combo (don't forget the cottage cheese!) since first grade, in early 1979. I wouldn't eat Franco-American or Chef Boy-R-Dee now except on a bet. But I was pretty much sincere about all the others. Lightly blanched green beans with meatloaf and mashed potatoes don't taste right to me, any more than mesclun greens would with bacon and thick blue cheese dressing, or a hot dog on multigrain bread, or pate on Wonder Bread.
My FIL and MIL are both aficionados of army green veg. When I'm feeling generous, I'll scoop out the veg for me and AB from the blanching water and just leave theirs go.
Lightly blanched green beans with meatloaf and mashed potatoes don't taste right to me, any more than mesclun greens would with bacon and thick blue cheese dressing, or a hot dog on multigrain bread, or pate on Wonder Bread.
Category errors all over the place! Some of those things would feel okay to me, others are ridiculous.
(I just realized that the first Republican debate in which one might have viewed Rick Perry was tonight. Missed it. Oh well.)
Parsimon, how are the "errors" here category errors?
HOW IDIOMATIC
You calling me some sort of IDIOM?
133: I was not using the term in a technical manner.
There's an untechnical use of the phrase "cateogory error"?
136 -- If it's an error and it involves categories, it's a category error. Smoke that, philosophers!
Rain on your wedding day, that's a category error.
category error > allegory error > alligator error
133: I was not using the term in a technical manner.
Ok, in what sense were you using it?
Tell ya, workin' on the ranch you learn to keep a close eye on the bulls, less you find yourself embroiled in a cattle gore-y error.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: words don't mean any... boat.
Lightly blanched green beans with meatloaf and mashed potatoes don't taste right to me
Au contraire.
any more than mesclun greens would with bacon and thick blue cheese dressing
That's definitely silly.
or a hot dog on multigrain bread
I've done that! What's wrong with that?!
or pate on Wonder Bread.
What?
140: I can't tell if you're having me on or not, nosflow, but I just meant that JRoth was putting things in categories that I would not, necessarily.
JRoth was putting things in categories that I would not, necessarily.
What categories was he putting things in? "Things that don't taste good to me"?
148: Nostalgia, unrevised, I guess.
I grew up with the same kind of menu, mind: green bean casserole was made as bob described it upthread in 92, and hot dogs were to be served on a plain white bun, dammit. I'm deeply fond of a lot of that stuff, but updated when I've been able to figure out how to make it more palatable, where I didn't find it that great in the first place.
I am not fighting with JRoth! or with anyone. I think a green bean casserole made with fresh green beans and a homemade bechamel (white sauce) with some fresh herbs in it, and fresh parmesan and black pepper, topped with fresh breadcrumbs, is way better than the traditional out-of-a-can version. I'm sticking to my guns on this, and I would serve it with meatloaf if I served that.
JRoth should definitely start going by JRoth! per parsimon's suggestion.
I've actually made bechamel at home. It wasn't that hard and tastes much better than smashed green beans from a can.
parsimon, if the beans swell and harden, all is well. It's the stage at which one eats them green that precludes what could have been.
if the beans swell and harden, all is well
I've never heard of low-hanging *vegetables* before...
152: Okay. Thanks. We really are wanting to grow again next year from them.
154: Yes, we stupidly forgot to note the green beans we now like, and have done that successfully for several years.
I'm now imagining JRoth, restaurant reviewer, as the critic's boyfriend in TC Boyle's "Sorry Fugu".
155: Buh! We stupidly don't know what kind of cherry tomatoes we have this year, grown for the first time. They have been absolutely wonderful, and they're weird: they're smaller than regular cherry tomatoes, yet they're not grape tomatoes. They were some variant we got from the local greenhousery.
Can we grow them again from our existing ones? I don't really know how to do that with tomatoes.
You take the seeds and plant them in a tray indoors.
Plant them in the winter so you can move a biggish plant outside when it is warm.
Moby, do you know anything about growing plants?
Collecting tomato seeds is a little messy (ferment slightly in water, I think?) But why not try? Though it might be a hybrid and not true from seeds.
Josh, you have. What love doth grow vaster than empires?
As I sort of implied above, even though I don't use many canned foods in my cooking these days I retain a certain amount of residual fondness for them. This is due largely to the important role they played in the trading post system, which originated at a time when no one had refrigeration, so the only options for produce were fresh and canned, and most trading posts were too far from major agricultural areas to realistically get fresh produce. By the time my parents started trading in the seventies, the stores had refrigeration, but many of the customers still didn't, so even though they sold frozen vegetables the canned ones remained key to the business.
Along these lines, and relevant to the discussion we had a while back about those generic products introduced in the late seventies that just had the name of the product on the package, this past weekend I was talking to my mom and she mentioned that those came out several years after she and my dad started trading, and that a lot of their older Navajo customers hated them because they couldn't read and depended on the pictures on the cans to tell what they were getting. The result was that they would buy the name-brand cans with pictures on them even though they were more expensive than the generic. IIRC, the original idea behind the generics was something along these lines: that people wouldn't actually buy them, but that they would make the name brands look more attractive. I don't think this is exactly the mechanism the marketing people had in mind, though.
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Well, this is a rather intense news story that I don't understand.
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By dog collar, do they mean as in restraining Canis lupus familiaris or as in someone in holy orders in one of the more sartorially ostentatious Christian denominations? I'm not sure whether knowing this would help, but hey, it's data.
104: the former, I think; I believe that the thing that goes round the neck of a vicar is a "clerical collar" in US English. A "dog collar" is reserved for things that go round the necks of dogs. Which is logical, I suppose.
I could be wrong about this though.
The thing that goes round the neck of a vicar is formally a clerical collar, but vicars frequently refer to them colloquially as dog collars IME.
|| I just had a dream in which I was desperately supersaturating some salt water for use in fixing a $1000 (dessert) wonton that I had carelessly chipped right before a friend was to present it to his fiancée. Awoke disturbed that this wouldn't make for a very effective glue.
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166: oh, I know they do in the UK, but in the US as well?
167: than which no dream can be more swipple.
In an ironic twist, the friend is Indian.
It never rains at a sensible point in the year in particular. It's fucking dark from March til June and then again in the fall and it's hot and humid in the summer. The snow days are the nicest days!
This *is* the climate of London, just it's dark from October to March.
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NMM2 the British National Health Service.
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163 seems pretty straightforward. Do a bunch of hard drugs, start getting frisky, do some more, decide to take it to the bathtub, both pass out, one guy has a heart attack.
Is it really that hard to imagine? Have I lived a life of exceptional debauchery? It certainly hasn't felt that way lately. I need to get out more.
my stepfather frequently shared with the family his sexual fantasy of me naked in a bathtub full of le sueur canned peas. I was never sure if he was serious in finding the image sexy or was just messing our heads.
As to the OP, I was raised on canned green beans. Smothered in MARGARINE. I haven't eaten a canned green bean in almost 20 years, but I have fond memories. As a child I spent several days a week with my grandmother, and she served the same thing every time: sausage, boiled potatoes, and 1) canned green beans or 2) frozen broccoli, cooked to a beautiful state of olive green (I'm sure this was because she couldn't find canned broccoli). I have been left with a love of overcooked broccoli and canned green beans, but the thought of a boiled potato makes me gag.
Now I cook almost exclusively with frozen green beans, or fresh ones if they're on sale.
boiled new potatoes with butter and flat-leaf parsley are lovely.
you don't have to cook them to death.
175 is too weird to respond to, right? I sort of want your opinions but can't imagine anyone offering anything other than, "that's really fucked up, dude." it understandably dominates my sentiments towards canned peas.
I do feel that a southern-style "salad" of canned peas and ham and...something else, I forget, maybe hard-boiled eggs? and mayonnaise, is good in a "not in the same category as the real food" way. as canned peaches in cling syrup are just a different food from, and have nothing to do with, real peaches, yet are nonetheless delicious. someone made this distinction above, oh well. we ate them during irene in ny just because it seemed the thing to do. we had fresh peaches from the wainscott farm stand on the counter, so it wasn't exactly an island of desperation.
182.1 -- I was thinking fresh would be better.
Amanda,
That may be the case, but my grandmother was of the belief that spices were immoral and inappropriate for small children. Spices included "salt" and "pepper." Thus, potatoes were to be served in a fine sauce of melted margarine and nothing else. Also, food that was not boiled for about half an hour was also morally suspect.
Also, M.H., et. al.: dried beans are not cheaper if you buy a bunch of bags of dried beans, never use them because you don't plan dinner more than half an hour ahead, and then throw them out/give them away, 2 years later, when you move house.
I was merely repeating the dried bean argument before somebody else could say it. Except for the small lentils, I've always used canned.
canned beans can be massively improved by washing them in a colander to rinse off all the can funk. if anyone's not already doing that. CC: LOL. that was bold.
175 is too weird to respond to, right?
Yes. You in a tub full of edamame, on the other hand, is something we've all fantasized about at one point or another.
oh well, sure, that's only reasonable.
175 is like a scene from American Beauty in a world where product placement was the exclusive preserve (ah ha ha ha) of Midwestern food suppliers.
Related: Roger Daltrey in a bath full of baked beans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_Sell_Out
A nurse in a bath full of baked beans
http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/4749087.LOUGHTON__Baked_bean_bath_for_fundraising_teacher/
190: Also, nosflow in a tub of natto.
OT: How long do I have to listen to beeping before I'm legally allowed to smash the equipment that is beeping?
I mashed on buttons until it stopped beeping.
I told those asshats in IT he couldn't handle having a pager. Sigh.
175:
I vote that he was serious and messing with your heads.
That would take a lot of peas.
Jesus would have used strawberries.