Wordless Wednesday #6 Green Beans in Yogurt-Dill sauce pp. 172 YUM

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Braised Green Beans with Soy and Sesame pp. 173

Salutations
      I just got accepted into the foodie blog roll.  If you are visiting me through there,  welcome to my blog!  I am cooking through "Vegetables Everyday" by Jack Bishop.  I do not post the recipes,  but rather a review of each recipe we go through.   This is also a growing experiences for me because I am not a lover of most vegetables,  and I am not familiar with most vegetables.  This cookbook has been such a great book to go through,  I have learned so much so far in the over 30 recipes I have done.  A little over 300 more to do,  oh the things I still have to learn!  I cannot wait. 

Tonight
     I was unprepared for tonight.  I lost misplaced my menu plan and forgot that I needed to do a crockpot meal.  This meant that I needed to move something else to tonight, which was spaghetti!  Homemade spaghetti.   I still was unprepared, for I did not look ahead to see how long it was going to take to do each step and also there were the meatballs, and everything else.  I felt like I was running around the kitchen with my head cut off as everything finished at the wrong time.  I survived.  I am exhausted after spending 2 hours in the kitchen,  oh well.

Result
     It was very delicious.  The two chefs did not care for it as much,  but it was wonderful flavors for us adults.  Mr. Bishop suggested that plain chicken and rice be used in this dish.   I used my homemade noodles and some meat balls (since I forgot to make/buy sauce).   It reminded me of this great dish my mom makes with noodles, soy sauce, ginger, and sesame.  Oh what sweet memories of my mothers cooking!  Do you have any memories of your mom's cooking?

Thanks to Alisa for letting me know about foodista!  This post is now part of: Green Beans

Green Beans with Toasted Walnuts and Tarragon pp. 172

Green Beans
      I begin again with another farmers market find,  green beans.  The fun thing about fresh green beans is,  they have this fresh smell that frozen, or even canned green beans have.  In fact,  there is this taste, that I love,  that can only be had when biting into a fresh green bean.

Sous Chef Squeaker
     Tonight,  Chef Turbo wanted to just play video games,  so Sous Chef Squeaker took over, like any Sous Chef should do.  Thankfully I have the Pampered Chef chopper,  which is safe enough for this little guy to operate.  He loved every second of it,  even though he was not strong enough to chop it.

No Tarragon
     Sadly,  I could not find any fresh tarragon at any stores,  and for some reason I thought I had some dried tarragon in the house,  and I did not.   I did some research and I found that there were some great substitutions for tarragon.  I used anise and marjoram, and ....




Results
     De-li-ci-ous.  It was so good.  I never expected that anise seed would work so well with green beans.  You'll have to try it some sometime!

Other News:
     I got my new bar pan from Pampered Chef today.  Since I had to season the pan,  I made, for the first time for the boys,  'Pigs in a Blanket'.   I used 'real' hot dogs,  but I used Hebrew National hot dogs.  I really like the hot dogs better than the other kind of meat they use in 'pigs in a blanket'.  Usually it tastes weird and salty to me,  but this was a much better idea.  My new bar pan is on the road to being seasoned.  I cannot wait! :D

Green Beans with Bacon and Onion pp. 173

THURSDAY FARMERS MARKET
   I am sorry for not posting yesterday.  It was a very special day for me (I got older!) and I wanted to take the day off and have a little fun.  One of the ways I did that was to find another farmers market in my area.  This (to the right) was my bounty!  Local, fresh vegetables.   I have been finding that the "farmers markets" are in need of more farmers and variety.  Sometimes there will be three vendors all selling the same thing.  I find it quite frustrating.  None the less,  I got some green beans and peppers.  The peppers are for next week,  but the green beans I used tonight!

GREEN BEANS
   When it comes to summer, there are two foods I really enjoy,  strawberries and green beans.  I love fresh green beans!  I love to just wash them off and nibble on them.  I could practically have them for a whole snack that way!  But I had to prepare them to meet my goal tonight.

  I was able to get Chef Turbo to help me snap the ends.  He seemed to have a lot of fun when he figured it out.  I guess I take snapping green beans for granted since he had a hard time with it for a while.  I still had to go back into the discard pile to rescue usable ends.


DISH RESULT:
I really enjoyed it.  It was refreshing,  had no form of fat (except the turkey bacon fat, which was not really there at all!) and the parsley was a nice touch.  It called for an onion,  so I used a shallot.  And I ate it without gagging!  So happy.  It also called for bacon, and as I mentioned before,  I used Turkey Bacon.  I really prefer going with the healthier alternative and the lack of animal fat in the pan did not mess the dish up one bit.