Green Beans

My husband specializes in growing fruits (peaches, plums, raspberries), and vegetables (green beans, cucumbers and eggplant this year).  We probably will not get any eggplant, but we had a bumper crop of beans and cukes.  I was disappointed a few weeks ago with the beans; we seemed to be at the end of their too short season.

The beans that I was picking were thick and barely edible.  I also noticed white beans in the pod.  Dummy, this is where beans that  vegetarians like me live on come from! 

 I threw a bunch of them into the crock pot with some dried white beans, soaked them and cooked them.  My daughter made a delicious soup with the white beans, vegetable stock, sweet potatoes, sauteed onions, and plum tomatoes.  Some day, perhaps next summer, I would like to make a soup with just the white beans from my garden and compare how they taste with the dried beans.  In this picture, I show a mature bean, opened up to reveal the white beans, and a young green bean, with no white beans yet.  They must grow quickly - for the green beans become inedible in just a few days.