Covid Journal, Day 182: Snapping Beans and Remembering When

59 again, cloudy and chilly. I am loving this weather, and it looks like it will be with us for several more days. Larry is watering the new fruit trees, though, so I am sure he'd like to see a good rain.

We put up beans again the other day, nice young Tenderette bush beans, which are my favorite as far as growing and taste. In this area, the white half-runners are queen; they are what almost everyone else grows, followed by Blue Lake. I'm not a fan of either. The half-runners have to be strung, and I don't like the taste of Blue Lake beans. Most people here cook their half-runners almost to a mush, usually adding bacon or ham and maybe onions. They're tasty, but to me seem like all the life and nutrition is cooked out of them. Of course, probably that's true of most canned green beans, but the Tenderettes retain some firmness. Since I don't like frozen beans--and as I said yesterday, they tend to go to waste because I forget about them being in the freezer--then canning is the only option.

So pretty for late beans. We had similar good luck last year with beans planted at the beginning of August.

Well, canning or freezing are not the only options. There's leather britches, which are green beans strung up and dried. I tried them once for Larry's sake, because he had fond memories of them from his childhood. But all I can say is yuck. Maybe I cooked them wrong, but to me if it hadn't been for the hambone and onions I cooked them with, there'd have been no flavor to them at all. And they took a long, long time to cook. Here in this photo, I was soaking them prior to cooking. 

It seems like every time we snap beans--a benefit of Tenderettes, no strings--we start talking about our childhoods, and memories of beans and gardens from those days. For both of us, bean-picking and snapping or stringing was relegated to the children. Both our fathers were the gardeners, our mothers were the preservers and we were the labor in between planting and canning. Back then, pretty much everyone grew half-runners, so the beans always needed to be strung. Half-runners live up to their name: the vines string out, not quite bush beans but not as tall as pole beans. Most people put up string for the beans to climb on but invariably the string would sag, and the beans were a tangle work through. Larry's father also grew pole beans, and I think our Dad might have done that a few times too, but our garden space was limited and pole beans take a lot of space. At one time the garden took up almost all of the back yard, but over the years it shrank in size so we had space to play ball and for Dad to build a little cookout grill from stacked cinderblocks and a grill from an old stove. It worked great.

Dad's cookout grill and the back yard. This picture was taken in 1965, and as you can see the garden, behind Mom, had gotten pretty small by then. That's me standing, and to the left and seated is my English Granny, who must have been visiting. Julie is talking to her, John is drinking from a cup, Joe and Tom are seated behind me, talking to Mom on the chaise, and Cathy is to my right. Mom looks pretty good here for a lady with 13 children.

Dad also built a picnic table, and that is where we would sit to snap beans, there or on the front porch. It seemed a shame to have to spend long summer afternoons at this chore, so there was plenty of grousing and bickering, but a lot of laughter and fun too.  We'd get in trouble with Mom if we left too many strings or missed beans with bad places in them. Back then, most people put up their beans using a water bath canner, boiling the jars for 3 hours. The kitchen would be a steam bath, and the rest of the house felt the effects too. Pressure canners were just coming into use, but Mom, like most other women, didn't trust the new canners and were afraid of them blowing up. A shame, that. They could have avoided hours of heat, but the new canners also cost a good bit so that was another deterrent.

Larry's memories are similar to mine. His father grew large gardens up on a hill, which required water being carried up at planting time. There was usually more than his family could use, and they would share produce with their neighbors. His mother processed her beans a bit differently. She boiled a large  washtub of water over an outside fire. The jars of beans were put in the washtub with towels between them to keep them from breaking, and boiled for hours. Although it might have been more work to set this up, it seems to me a better way than heating up the whole house during processing. But neither method really assured that bacteria would be killed, as some bacteria need higher temperatures than 212 degrees, the temperature of boiling water, to be killed off, no matter how long the jars were boiled.

We're lucky today. We have safer pressure canners, and many of us enjoy air conditioned kitchens. But the picking and snapping processes haven't changed, and just as when we were children, we talk and laugh and "remember when."

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Beans, Beans, Beans

Right now we're covered up in beans. Purple beans, flat Roma beans, rattlesnake beans and half runners are all in full swing. Of course this happens during one of the busiest weeks of my summer. This past weekend was a mad whirl of beans and travel, work and beans. I'll write about the other things that happened this weekend in another post; right now here's a look at some of the bean madness.

These are rattlesnake beans. You might be able to see the faint purple mottling on the beans in this photo. The beans are very long, some almost a foot, and have an excellent flavor. They do have strings though, like half-runners. This variety is a southern heirloom that can withstand hig temperatures and will keep producing if it gets enough water. Right now we've got the hig temps for sure, but it hasn't rained for a while so I'm not sure how my beans will manage in these conditions.

The first picking of rattlesnake beans. I canned seven quarts but we had the wrong gasket for the canner and it gae me fits. So I froze the rest of them, an additional 10 quarts. We gave away a couple bags from this basket; it was heaped and overflowing after Larry finished picking. These are a pole bean, first time we've really had any luck with them.

Next up: the purple beans. If I can get the canner gasket I need, then these will go in the canner tomorrow night. If not, they're freezer-bound too. This is about a half-bushel, and more to pick tomorrow, Larry says.

He'll also be picking half runners to sell tomorrow, so he'll be a busy man.

We got our first ripe tomatoes this weekend and had one for breakfast. Ah, the pure pleasure of a tomato from the garden! Pics tomorrow, I hope.

Beans, Beans and More Beans

Remember how excited I was with these?

The first batch of beans always provides a nice glow that Yes! we did it right and we have these beans to show for our efforts. There is a little self-satisfaction, knowing that at least for 7 dinners we will have something homegrown on the table.

Then the next picking comes in. And the next, which might be, as it is this year, the biggest of them all.

Then the next planting is ready to pick. And the first planting needs another going over. The second planting needs to be picked again.

All of these beans need to be snapped and/or strung, washed, jarred up, and put through the canner. And it never fails that the beans come in when I'm at the height of busyness at work or with storytelling. It's just the way it works. Beans ready? Oh, I must have 3 major projects and a week of storytelling and company coming to stay too! It just works that way, I don't know why.

I have tried planting later--the work and storytelling will obligingly hold off until the beans are hanging thick. This year we planted early--I mean like April 15th, several weeks before our last frost date. And guess what? Work is on overdrive and storytelling is ramping up too.

What makes it all work is teamwork. Larry picks the beans and snaps them. When I get home, I do the rest. I can only get one load (7 quarts) through the canner in an evening because it takes a pretty good while to process them. A couple evenings this week he's had too many ready to can, so I froze anything over 7 quarts.

This method is working. Sometimes Larry helps me with my part too, especially the nights I get in late and there's little time to get everything done. Between us, we now have either 35 or 42 quarts canned (I lost track of how many canner-loads we've done) and another 7 quarts in the freezer. And the half-runners are just starting.

If you've never canned beans, don't let this tale scare you. It's not difficult to do, it just takes time. First, I get the jars out, wash and sterilize them with boiling water. After snapping, washing and putting the beans in jars, I fill the jars the rest of the way with boiling water. Some people add salt at this point--I don't, figuring we can add what we need later. Then I put the lids on and tighten down the bands as tight as I can get them.

The canner I use is a pressure canner that holds seven quarts or 10 pints. I put two quarts of hot water in it, add about a quarter cup of vinegar (I don't know why, it's just how I learned to do this!). I take the big rubber gasket out of the canner lid and rub it all the way around with cooking oil to hhelp it seal more quickly. Then I put the gasket back in place, put the lid on the pot and the jiggly thing on top, making sure it's set on the 10 (for 10 pounds pressure, which is recommended for beans), and light up the burner.

Beans take a while. Once the jiggler starts jiggling, I turn the heat down until it only jiggles 1 to 5 times in a minute. And start timing--it takes 40 minutes from the first jiggle until the beans are done.

So you can see, it's not difficult. A half-bushel of beans will make about 10 quarts, so you can get an idea of how many beans we've had, and Larry also sold a bushel the other day and we've given some away too.

Canning does take some equipment: a pressure canner (recommended for almost all foods now), a ladle for dipping in the water, and a canning funnel and jar lifter are useful. All my tools are vintage because I just like old kitchen tools, but you can still buy these things new.

I also have quite a collection of enamel dishpans for snapping, etc, but any pans or baskets will do, even bags will work for that part. I just like the enamel pans (called graniteware but a lot of people). A strainer or colander is often needed for rinsing vegetables, and I use a crab steamer for blanching vegetables for freezing and for boiling water. If you haven't noticed, lots of water is essential too--you can see how many times I mention washing and boiling and so on.

My cookstove is electric and I don't use it for canning because the canner is so heavy it would ruin my stove--been there, done that. So I use the cooker part of a turkey fryer for my heat, and do my canning outside on the deck. It works great and keeps the heat out of the house.

Once you have the equipment, you can process all kinds of food--beans, corn, tomatoes, soups, pickles, jams and jellies, and even meats. There is nothing quite like a full cellar to my mind. It provides the security of knowing that come what may, we will have food to eat, one of our basic needs for survival.

There are many good books on canning and preserving food. My favorite is an old Better Homes and Gardens Home Canning Cookbook. I bought it new in 1975 and have used it ever since.