Purple Beans

I went to the garden today to water me and Edouard's greens (he's in France until next month).  Everything is looking pretty good and I think I can start picking spinach and some baby lettuce.  Need to remember to bring the camera to take pictures.  Friday and Sat was in the 90's but luckily today it was much cooler and supposedly it will rain tonight and hopefully into tomorrow.

While there, I saw another gardener picking alongside her fence.  This is a plot of an older Italian couple who always have a fabulous garden.  I was chatting with the wife and asking her what kind of beans she was picking and she proceeded to hand me bunches of these beautiful purple pole beans.  If I like, she said, she would give me seeds to grow them next year.  She was also picking some green broad beans and gave me a few of those too.

I cooked them up for dinner and they were delicious!    Unfortunately, once cooked the purple bleeds out but the beans were very tender.

I was away this weekend so there was no cooking done, therefore no leftovers (dinner was turkey burgers, pole beans, and sliced apples so no leftovers).  I looked around the pantry and the fridge and pulled out my favorite vegetarian cookbook - Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.  I felt like a grain salad so settled on Quinoa with Lime Cumin Vinaigrette.   As always, the only thing I had in the recipe was the Quinoa so it was just to give me a start.

I cooked the rest of the quinoa that I had, chopped the rest of the banana peppers from the garden, chopped carrots and added toasted pine nuts, dried sour cherries (that I dried in June) and chopped dried plums.  The dressing was smashed garlic, diced shallots, lime juice, cumin, coriander, dry mustard, salt and olive oil.  Toss all together

My project this week is to inventory the freezer and then plan some meals based on what is frozen.

Also, defrosting a whole chicken and I want to debone it this week before roasting.