Green Beans for Dinner....

...again. It's all or nothing in the garden. Most of the people we can share the bounty with grow their own. They are delicious and taste good cold or hot. I never cook green beans without thinking of Nana, John's, grandmother. She lived with her sister-in-law, Auntie (naturally) and we went there every year when the children were very little for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a traditional meal cooked in the traditional way, which in those days meant cooking the green beans for hours with a piece of salt pork (as if they were dried shell beans.) the greyish pulpy result was not appealing, but of course, we ate them all the same. 

The only time we ever saw Auntie's family was at Thanksgiving. There seemed to be no love lost between Auntie's family and Nana's but an uneasy truce was maintained for the sake of the old ladies and with the help of a stiff drink poured from a bottle of bourbon brought from home. Nana was a teetotaler. She wouldn't provide any sort of alcohol but would tolerate it if it was brought with us. I was a young bride and just beginning to learn the family tradition, which, in my case did not include the consumption of bourbon before lunch, or ever, for that matter.

We were not permitted to assist with the meal preparation, although I suspect most of us would have been happy for the diversion from the strained living room conversations. I really didn't know what the underlying reasons were for the family division, but I suspect it had something to do with the fact that Auntie was allowed to live as the 'poor relation',depending on Nana's charity, despite the fact that her son and his family lived in relative prosperity.

One year as the pre-dinner drinks were being enjoyed in the living room, the turkey caught fire in the oven in the kitchen. The fire department was summoned as the house filled with smoke, but I noticed that there was an unusual amount of scurrying about while we awaited their arrival. It was explained to me later that they were hiding the bottle and the half filled glasses of bourbon from the volunteer firefighters and presumably preventing embarrassment to Nana.

The firefighters extinguished the fire and swept through the house with some sort of smoke abatement device and were gone. We all ate the (smoked) turkey and the grey beans, the cranberry sauce, the sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes, the stuffing and the gravy, the pumpkin pie and the mince pie, helped with the dishes and then repaired back to the living room for board games or tryptophan induced naps.

A scant four hours later it all appeared back on the table with the addition of bread for sandwiches....The fire in the oven, and the hiding of the booze was the only deviation in this schedule in all the years we continued to go there for Thanksgiving. 
 
Tonight we will be having green beans cooked in boiling salted water for 5 minutes, drained, salted again and allowed to cool. I will dress them with vinaigrette, fresh tarragon and sprinkle them with some sliced green onions and the chopped padron peppers the ground squirrels left for us in the garden.