Tasting August

“I snapped them off where they hung in slender twosomes, bit into one, and tasted nothing but August, distilled into pure, crisp beaniness.”
—  Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Painting green beans

Watercolor sketch of green beans

“The shape of a bean is a lovely thing to see.  When very young, it curves like a small scimitar, later it lengthens to a lance size.  And the color is beautiful, the golden wax has a glimmering tone and the green is a rich blue-green like an agate.”
— Gladys Tabor, Stillmeadow Daybook

Eat your vegetables!

Contemplating Sisterhood

“To my sister Mary who has always believed that I can do anything she puts her mind to.”
— Betty MacDonald, dedication for The Egg and I

Watercolor sketch with sister quotation:  “Sisters are different flowers from the same garden.”

Today is my sister’s birthday, so this post is dedicated to her.  I have five sisters, so you would think I might be somewhat of an expert on sisterhood.  But I’m not.  We resemble each other most strongly on the outside — our physical attributes — and we are also alike in many ways on the inside.  Too often we share those family traits that are unattractive — stubborn, domineering, critical, impatient.  But we’re also hard-working, loyal, not afraid to take charge, and interesting in our own ways.

I find that I like my sisters best when I am alone with them, one on one, away from the others.  We are hard to take in large doses.  Thankfully we’ve each married men who can temper our worst faults and who seem to love us anyway.  The Betty MacDonald quote at the beginning of this post makes me laugh because I can sense some prickliness there.  I can relate to that.

In theory, I like that we disagree — different flowers in the same garden and all that . . . Perhaps our differences are meant to teach us important lessons about breaking down walls of hard-headedness and hard-heartedness.  If one believes in God, after all, isn’t there some grand reason why we’ve been thrown together in the same family?

I think we all need to do some work to figure out how we can better thrive together as we grow older.  We can take as our model the “three sisters” of Native American lore and gardening practice.  Corn, beans, and squash planted together, companion planting helping each to grow.  And these “three sisters” were nutritional complements, too.

The three sisters: corn, beans and squash

So I’ll be contemplating sisterhood as I make up a batch of Three Sisters Saute with Sage Pesto, which I found online on foodnetwork.com.  You can find the recipe at the above link, and I’ve copied it here, too, for your convenience:

Ingredients

• 1 pound zucchini squash, cut into bite-size, or thinly julienned
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup heirloom beans, cooked
• 2 ears frozen sweet corn, thawed and drained
• 1 cup chopped ripe Roma tomatoes
• Salt and pepper
• 1/3 cup Sage Pesto, recipe follows

Directions

Rinse and trim squashes, julienne on a mandoline using the skins for a pasta effect or cut into bite-sized chunks or use whole baby squashes.

Heat oil in a large saute pan. Add squash and saute for 1 minute, then in succession tossing and stirring with each addition add beans, corn, tomatoes, then add the sage pesto stirring gently to distribute evenly.

Salt, only if needed and serve immediately.

Sage Pesto:

• 1 cup pine nuts  (I used raw cashews as I didn’t have pine nuts on hand)
• 1 1/2 cups fresh sage leaves, firmly packed
• 1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup garlic chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 tablespoon fresh, mild goat cheese, optional

Toast pine nuts in a dry saute pan or in a 350 degree F oven on a sheet pan. Combine all ingredients in food processor or blender and process until smooth.

Olathe sweet corn

Green beans

Three sisters — corn, beans, zucchini squash — plus tomatoes ready to saute

Fresh sage and squeezed lemon

Ingredients for sage pesto

Sage pesto (I froze the leftovers)

Three Sisters Saute with Sage Pesto

Dinner full of fresh harvest flavors

Beans: Eating the Blessed Earth

Watercolor sketch of beans, green and yellow

Beans Green and Yellow
by Mary Oliver

In fall
it is mushrooms
gathered from dampness
under the pines;
in spring
I have known
the taste of the lamb
full of milk
and spring grass;
today
it is beans green and yellow
and lettuce and basil
from my friends’ garden —
how calmly,
as though it were an ordinary thing,
we eat the blessed earth.

Fresh green beans in colander

Cutting green beans