My grandpa has been gardening for years and years. As far back as I can remember, my grandparents always had fresh tomatoes and fresh strawberries growing in their garden. Of course, I’m sure they had more than that, those were just my favorites, so I remember them best!
I’ve never been much of a green thumb. I always kill the house plants that I have because I forget to water them. I guess they just don’t ask often enough for a drink, like my kids do! My grandpa, who is still very healthy and still gardens, called me up at the beginning of gardening season and asked if I’d take the food that he grew if there was any excess. I, of course, jumped at the chance. Do you realize how much food 8 people go through? Any extra food is always appreciated. In addition, he also sent me home wit 2 tomato plants that needed to be potted into a larger pot. He even provided one of the pots. They are sitting in a wagon in our front yard. We put them there so we could move them to the sun, but it turns out that they’re in enough sun where they are. The funny thing is, I rarely forget to have them watered because we walk by them every day and notice all the yummy fruit on them!
Not too long ago, he called me up and said that the first batch of green beans is ready for me to pick up. When I was a child, we’d grow green beans in our family garden and I would assist with snapping them, but I don’t remember ever knowing how to cook them. So now that I had a large bag of green beans, I had to figure out how. I could’ve just asked my grandpa or my mom, but that would mean admitting that I didn’t know how to cook them, lol…so I did a little research on my own.
This is what we came up with:
Let me just tell you, these are DELICIOUS! I had to take our meal the other night to the ball park and my 12 year old let a friend of hers try one and her response was “Those are good and I don’t even like green beans!”. My 6 year old who can’t get enough greens, of course gobbled them up. My 10 & 3 year old didn’t really care for them, but they don’t like many vegetables anyway.
Garden Fresh Green Beans Recipe
Ingredients:
Green Beans (I did enough to fill my largest skillet)
Onion, Chopped
1 T. minced garlic
1T butter
1T olive oil
1 cup of chicken broth
Salt
Directions:
Melt butter in skillet and add olive oil. Saute the onions and garlic in the oil.
While they are cooking, cut or snap ends off of green beans. You can also snap them into smaller bite sized pieces, but I like mine bigger, so I didn’t.
Once they are ready, add them to the skillet with the onions and garlic. Stir it all up, evenly coating the green beans with the onions and garlic. Add one cup of chicken broth and simmer for about 20 minutes covered. You’ll want to let the broth cook off. If there is still broth after 20 minutes, remove the lid and let the liquid cook off. Check to see if they’re as tender as you’d like, serve and eat!
Do you have a garden? What is your favorite way to cook fresh green beans?