Fresh Green Beans

Fresh green beans from the garden are one of my favorite vegetables.

We used to plant lots of green beans for that was the one vegetable that all the children would eat. And I always liked to have plenty stored in the freezer for use during the winter.

BUT we would always have the children help snap the beans. This process is necessary before freezing green beans. We would sit around our huge round kitchen table and everyone would have a pile of beans to snap.

In the early days we snapped off both ends and also put the very small beans in a separate pile. The small beans seem as tender as butter when cooked and they were always eaten right away or saved for a special dark of winter treat.

Sometimes we “frenched” the beans. This is the process of cutting the beans in half lengthwise In the early days we used a vegetable peeler that had a small frencher on the end.One at a time you had to push the beans through.This was a most hated job. Later I was able to get an automatic frencher where the handle was turned and the beans were put in. It was much more satisfactory to work with.

To make the snapping task more interesting we would play word games as we snapped. We played “going on a trip” and “ three thirds of a ghost”. These games were good for a wide range of ages and helped the time pass quickly.

The children all thought that the round table was the biggest thing in the world and that the pile of green beans was HUGE and that all the beans would NEVER be snapped.To this day when Green Beans are mentioned all my now grown children groan and talk about the awful tasks they had when the fresh green beans were picked and ready to be processed.

But they still do like to eat them!