Triple the Green Beans for Triple F {Food Fight Friday}

Hey there everyone! I hope you all had a great week. Though I might just fall asleep at 6pm after hanging out at the pool with my niece today, I made it home this afternoon in enough time to jump on the @foodfightfriday wagon for the second week in a row. Today I'm sharing some of the things I made with my green bean haul from @dksart's mom. To be honest, green beans have never been high up on my favorite vegetable list, but that's probably because it's not often that I have had them straight from the garden! As usual, fresh is abso-darn-lutely best.

Luckily she gave me the heads up before we came up there this past weekend that she had some to share with us, so we did scale back a bit on our farmers market haul this past trip (though to be fair that was mostly because @dksart went and stuck to the list, as I don't tend to do myself, haha). She thought she picked about a half bushel, and I grabbed a little less than half of that to bring home with us. The friend who grows these delicious beans charges $20 a bushel, so my big bowl was only about $5 worth of beans! Can't get much cheaper than that for healthy, fresh food. Unless of course you grow it yourself. I think next year we may have to add some beans or snap peas to our garden experiments to see what kind of luck we have with them!

As usual, you don't always realize how much of something you have until you go to start preparing it all in the kitchen. After getting some inspiration from @fionasfavourites in the @steemitbloggers discord channel, I got to work!

Given the amount that I had, I knew some were going to have to get preserved in some way. I originally thought pickles, but as we have soooo many cucumbers coming in from multiple sources I think I'm going to save the pickling for them. I opted to blanch and freeze some chopped beans to use in soups and stews later on down the road. Just a quick boil and a dip in an ice bath before they got bagged up for the freezer.

The second way I incorporated them into my meal plan this week was in a potato salad that came out perfectly! I had some nice little red potatoes from the farmers market, so I boiled those and did a quick blanch on the green beans for the main part of the salad.

For the dressing I blended up a package of silken tofu with a few tablespoons each of dijon mustard and apple cider vinegar, a good heaping tablespoon of miso, about a quarter cup of fresh chopped dill, and a few dashes each of paprika and dried ground celery seed. That came out delicious on its own, so I will definitely be using that for other salad combinations this summer!

The whole salad I will definitely repeat exactly the same, though! I was never a huge fan of really rich, creamy potato salad even before going vegan, but this dressing came out super smooth yet still pretty light. The tang from the vinegar and mustard is always a great blend with the earthy dill. Next time I get invited to a BBQ this is coming with.

My third green bean adventure this week came in a bit of a red lentil dahl concoction. This is one of those things I never quite know what to call, but they always come out delicious! Everything you need in one bowl.

Onions, red lentils, roasted cauliflower, green beans, Swiss chard and coconut milk all cooked with a ton of spices like cumin, coriander, turmeric, smoked paprika and whatever else I grabbed from the spice cabinet. I mixed it with cooked wild rice and tossed in some fresh chopped mint and a squeeze of lime for a really satisfying meal.

Don't you just want to grab a spoon and dig in? As sad as it sometimes is to polish off the final servings of fantastic meals for the week, it does mean it's time to hit the farmers market for some more inspiration to have a repeat performance for the week ahead! Though since we've started pulling some of the first veggies from the garden I might have to start reigning in my farmers market purchases....nah, who am I kidding? 😜

Banners by @zord189, @woman-onthe-wing, @dksart and @bearone for @steemusa