Fava Beans

Very labor intensive but somewhat meditative as well. The top photo shows the process of getting the beans out of the pod which is itself a bit of a chore. The pod doesn't zip open like peas but has to be more or less pried open revealing the beans nestled in a soft furry bed lining the shell. Once this is done the beans are parboiled for about five minutes until the tough inner shell starts to split. Then it is quite easy to just pop them out of the second shell as shown in the bottom photo. A big bag of pods and a couple of handfuls of the inner shells go into the compost, and the resulting small bowl of bright green beans will go into a salad. They are also delicious pureed with a little bit of pressed garlic and olive oil and eaten on bread or crackers. Yum. Especially pretty with roasted red pepper sweated in a paper bag, peeled and also pureed with a bit of garlic and olive oil.

We've been getting up a little earlier with the change of season (it is feeling more and more like spring. There is sometimes morning fog which I always hated in Berkeley but it almost always clears by 10 or 11am, unlike in Berkeley where it often wouldn't clear at all. The half hour drive to Kathy's seemed easier because we had a little more time to wake up and have coffee before hitting the road.

Back to the garden after lunch to pull weeds, rake up the leaves which blew into plants and all sorts of very inconvenient places in last week's gusty winds. It's one thing we shouldn't have to be doing this time of year when the trees have just sprouted their new leaves. I've really enjoyed working outside but had to have a conversation with John about how I wasn't sure we would be able to work together on anything out there because of our totally different concepts of finishing tasks and making lists. 

When I make a list I expect to work my way through it within a couple of days. John's lists are a much more fluid arrangement. He makes them and leaves them all over the house but when he tackles things on the list and when he finishes what he starts are very different concepts. He puts his tools down, wanders off, gets sidetracked on something else and then can't find the tools he was using when he comes back to a task. He works hard in the garden and gets a lot done but his approach does tend to be a bit scattered....

On the other hand, gardening is a lot more subject to 'mission creep' than other tasks, especially when leaves and weeds lurk in surprising and unexpected places.  Even I am guilty of straying off course from time to time. But I DO put my tools away at the end of the day, even if I have to get them back out again in the morning.

Speaking of working together, we've been watching a British series called 'Grand Design' about people building their 'dream homes' with seemingly wildly unrealistic budgets and deadlines. I quite enjoy it but it drives John a little crazy. It seems the British have the same inclination to build enormous houses as we do, but many of the ones on this program are put up in wildly inhospitable places. It offers us  me an opportunity to feel superior and critical. Somehow, all these people manage to finish their projects even when they cost twice as much money as they said they had, take twice as long to finish, and still come up with the cash to furnish them elegantly and expensively. Surprisingly, only one couple  (so far) has gotten a divorce during the proceedings.