Receta Fresh Italian Green Bean Salad & A Kitchen Garden
garden fresh-picked green beans
Italian-style with goat cheese and pimento
For me, the best time of year is during the summer when it’s time to reap the rewards of our spring-time labor in the gardens!
Although my favorite all-time season is spring when everything outside wakes up after their winter nap, I experience just an amazing internal feeling of gratification for an abundant garden harvest throughout summer. Truthfully, it never fails to overwhelm me how we can feed and sustain ourselves in such a heathy, pure way just from planting tiny little seeds!
Food from seeds!
Seriously, just stop and think about this for a second! It’s mind-boggling!
If everyone could have a garden, whether on an acreage, farm, or in even in pots placed on a patio or windowsill, we’d all be nourishing our bodies, minds and souls so much better!
I’ve been so fortunate to have been raised in a family of extraordinary gardeners from Italy to Iowa. Gardening is just in my blood!
fresh green beans from my gardens
When we built our home, I specifically wanted my vegetable and herb gardens to be right next to my kitchen with a door that I could just walk out into the gardens with my sheers and harvesting basket in hand at a moment’s notice.
my kitchen window and gardens just outside my door
During the winter, I look out at my raised beds through my kitchen window and see them empty and sleeping through the cold. My thoughts seriously drifting off, as I cannot wait until I can get my hands back in the dirt to plant again come springtime! As my father used to say, “You’re the one in the family that certainly got the farming gene.” No one else in my immediate family gardens any more . . . just me. And I love it!
This week, we picked beans. LOTS of beans!
Which means that it is that time of year to prepare my ‘go to’, ultra-simple Fresh Italian Green Bean Salad that my mother continues to make to this day and that which everyone eats straight out of the serving bowl without waiting to use a bowl of our own! Oh yes, we eventually do use our manners and serve this bean salad in a bowl, but when it is first made? Look out, we go straight in for it and can’t stop!
freshly cooked beans
chopped onions added to Italian dressing
toss the beans into the dressing while warm
generously salt and pepper to taste
To amp this salad up a little bit more, sprinkle in some crumbled goat cheese and some drained, diced red pimentos! DELICIOUS!
Fresh Italian Green Bean Salad
What You Need:
Fresh green beans, cleaned
Good Seasons Italian Dressing (from the package, prepare according to directions on box)
Several green onions, sliced or 1 onion, diced
Freshly cracked sea salt and black pepper to taste.
Instructions
Boil a tall pot of water on the stove.
Add clean green beans and boil for about 15 minutes, until chewy; don't let them get soft because they keep cooking, just like pasta!
In a large mixing bowl, pour in about 1 cup of the Italian dressing.
Chop up your onions and mix them in the dressing.
When the beans are cooked, drain well.
Immediately while the beans are still warm, add them to the dressing and onions . . . the beans soak up the dressing better when they are warm!
Generously salt and pepper to taste.
3.1
We do the same thing for our Beet Salad!
Here’s another recipe for Simple Beet Salad that I adapted from “The Art of Simple Food” by Alice Waters.
- Fresh Italian Beet Salad
- and now if you love green beans, especially the thin French ‘haricot vert’ variety, you will absolutely LOVE this fresh recipe for
- Fresh Haricot Vert Green Beans with Roasted Peppers
- Fresh Haricot Vert Green Beans with Roasted Peppers
one last peak from my kitchen window as a lazy summer day goes by . . .
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