Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Unseen Runner Beans
On Saturday at the market, Jenny had a basket of runner
beans like I'd never seen before. They weren't flat and smooth, but thick and the outside had a ridged, almost stripy texture. At first I didn't believe that these were really runner beans, but Jenny assured me that they were. So, obviously, I had to get a bag of them just to find out what they were all about.They sat in my fridge until tonight when I was looking for an accompaniment for the sweetcorn that really needed to go. I know that this seems like the wrong way to go about it all. Normal people buy their meat or fish and then choose the accompaniments. But I am such an impulsive buyer, when I am at the market I tend to end up getting whatever seems interesting regardless of whether these things go together. Then I take them home, despair at the fact that I have spent all my money, wrecked my back carrying loads of stuff around town, and
finally try to come up with dinners I might make from these ingredients and patch-up the gaps in the recipes with the help of further trips to my favourite food haunts.Tonight's dinner was the result of one of those wrongly organised planning sessions. I first got the beans without knowing what I would do with them. Then I went out and got some more veggies, among them two ears of corn. And when both really wanted to go to tonight, I stopped at Marks & Spencer on the way home for some outdoor-bred Lincolnshire sausages. (Hmm... How do you breed a sausage?) Add to that some garlic roast potatoes and onion gravy and you end up with a very nice mid-week dinner.
Christine at 9:55 pm
