Green Bean Salad with Feta and Mint

I love to cook.  It is not a struggle for me.  I make time for it because i find it incredibly rewarding.  But, I am not a crazy person and i can certainly appreciate a dish that is easy and fast.

So tonight's dinner plans were not terribly lofty.  I was going to make rice cooker risotto (same ingredients + none of the technique = kind of the same flavor, but none of the texture, which is good enough most of the time), sautéd shrimp, and green beans.  Note the lack of description about my green bean plans.  All i knew was that i had a bunch from my garden and i was going to eat them tonight.

I am not actually a huge green bean fan.  At least not when they are from the store.  Normally i would just steam them, maybe squeeze some lemon and crush some garlic on top.  But it was always uninspired and pretty damn unrewarding as well.

Pinterest is my best friend and worst enemy.  Because I do love to cook, I pin mostly recipes.  It is shocking to me how many mediocre, if not absolutely terrible recipes there are out there!  Any idiot with a blog can post a recipe (what??!!?) and all it takes is another idiot to pin it and then it's game fucking over for food as we know it.  I am disappointed more often than not.  And yet i keep going back.  

Most of the recipes i sifted through today were some variation of a parmesan topping on a green bean or a bacon crumbled around a green bean, or both.  probably tasty, but….well……meh.  Then i found a recipe pinned from Saveur magazine.  It's a good thing i am typing this and not telling you about it with my mouth because i have NO idea how to pronounce Saveur.  

The recipe had green beans.   I had green beans!

The recipe had mint.  I had mint!

Okay, here is the actual recipe.  i am not going to post a pic of my friggin bottle of red wine vinegar….

1 tbsp. red wine vinegar

3 tbsp. olive oil
1 clove garlic, finely minced
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 lb. green beans, trimmed
8 oz. feta, cut into ½" cubes
½ cup mint leaves, roughly chopped
½ small red onion, thinly sliced

My green beans are rattlesnake beans, which are an heirloom pole variety.  They are really cool looking, and come from a gorgeous purple flower.  

The recipe is not complicated at all….just whisk the dressing in a bowl and throw everything else on top.  There is a little bit of bean blanching required, but since i was making rice cooker risotto and not actual risotto, i figured i could splurge a bit and take the extra 4 minutes to properly blanch.



I was kind of disappointed to see the "rattlesnake" gets cooked out.


and then i was disappointed to realize i forgot to add the garlic.  but i've got to say, it was still really good.  i never would have put feta and mint together on my own, and that is why i am not a contributor to Saveur magazine.  well that, and the fact that i don't even know how to say it.



Here is my kid's finished plate.  She did the usual "i don't like it" about the green beans, but it was actually about the feta cheese that was on the green beans because she friggin eats these beans out of the garden fresh every day.  she tried one, renounced her previous declaration, and ate them up.  the risotto….. not so much.  one can't win with a toddler, ever.

Do you have a green bean recipe you love?  or a mint recipe you love?   I've got plenty of both to eat up this summer and I trust you more than i trust pinterest.

And while that is true……ugh..….I'm just going to go peek and see if just maybe there might be a recipe or two……...

Alley Transformation - Bookshelf

This one, i am excited about.  

Far too often, Neil (he's the husband) and I will drive up and down the back alleys in our neighborhood to see what people are throwing away.   We live in a fairly well to do neighborhood, and people keep throwing away perfectly good things.  But mostly, people are throwing away crap.  And that is where things get fun.  

This bookshelf was definitely in the "crap" category.

It swayed back and forth.  It was cracked and chipped.  The brass feet were covered in paint.  It was a mess.  Neil wasn't into it, but i had a vision.  This is exciting because i am kind of a bit visionless these days.  Neil is a designer and he doesn't spend all day with a toddler so his brain still forms thoughts of value.  Mine just farts most of the time.  

We went to Home Depot and purchased three things:  paint, brass cleaner, and a particle board back.  The idea was that the back would stabilize the bookshelf and remove some of that unnerving swaying motion.   

I used TSP to clean it, Neil screwed on the back, and i polished the brass feet and caulked the seams.  Neil painted.  Neil painted into the night because there was a chance of rain the next day and we needed to get everything done pronto-like.

As you see, we used spray paint.  It's so easy to work with but there is no way in hell that piece was coming in the house to dry.  So we crafted the most ridiculous tent out of another bookshelf, a ladder, and a tarp.  We went to sleep proud.  And when i woke up in the morning and ran out there like a kid on Christmas morning, i saw that we let the sprinklers run overnight and the bookshelf was soaked.   See?  My brain makes farts.  ALL the fucking time.

The sun came out and we dried it off.  My daughter, O, wanted to help us.  but first she had to take care of something.  

KIDS ARE SO AWESOME AND HELPFUL.

So here it is, O's brand new bookshelf.   What dragged me into this whole ordeal to begin with is how there is that middle section for extra tall books.  O's got this one dinosaur book that just never fit anywhere.  A smart and more efficient mom would have probably just snuck the dinosaur book out of the house under the cover of night and left the book in the alley for some poor sucker to pick up.  But not me.   My brain farted out this much easier plan.  Dig the final product.

 Is the yellow too much?  Don't answer that.

Hi.

At some point, we really dug our heels in.  I think it was when we finally built the chicken coop and got the ladies.  It just became impossible to imagine Moving With Chickens, you know?  So while we have lived here for 6 years, the first 5 were strictly us figuring us out.  Now we know, we are the people who have chickens.  We are the people who garden.  We are the people who make our own mediocre laundry soap.  And we are the people who troll the alleys of our neighborhood, gathering up what other people throw away and giving it a new awesome life.   3 years ago, we would have been worried about freaking out our neighbors.  Today, we know who our people are and everyone else can suck it.

So, want to meet the chickens?   It's all their fault, anyway.

 This is River.  She is a barred rock, just over a year old.  She used to be a fantastic layer, but went broody recently and maybe kind of also lost her mind a little bit.  she picks at her feathers when no one is looking.  or maybe it is another chicken.  if so, that other chicken is a dick.

This is Rhino.  She is an australorp, and also just over a year.  She wins for most and biggest eggs, and she comes running every time she hears me come outside.  She is a better listener than most people I know.

This is Red.  Oh Red.  She is a Red Star.  She used to lay all kinds of crazy eggs….misshapen, teeny, even an egg in another egg.  Then she stopped laying.  She also has a fairly rotten personality.  She is lucky I am not one to cull, as she brings very little to the table.  but also, I JUST LOVE HER ANYWAY.  effing chickens.

 These gals are Sunny Jim and Hoos Foos.  Bonus points if you know where their names came from.  (Hint:  it's a literary masterpiece).  Sunny Jim is an easter egger and Hoos Foos is an actual pure bred Ameraucana.  Neither of them have started laying yet as they are just teenagers, but they should within the next few months.  Hoos Foos will lay blue eggs and Sunny Jim's should be some version of blue or green.

This is Peaches.   She is just a wee thang, maybe 7 weeks old.  She is a white rock.  She is giving Rhino a run for the money, as far as attentiveness goes.  Shit is about to get real up in here, if you know what i mean.

More to follow on their setup, how they live and how we all roll with it.   The internet has a lot of chicken sites and they all tell you exactly the same three things about chickens.  so hopefully some of my real life experience may offer up some more insight for you.  or maybe you just want to look at pretty chicken pictures.  either way, i'm down.   i've been there myself.  i won't judge.