Not Lazy, Lazy, Not Lazy

One Saturday morning after a good rain, Dan went out to check the garden. I was in the house shredding zucchini (yay, food processor!) to put in the freezer. Meanwhile I was heating up water in a big pot on the stove so I could blanche corn and put it in the freezer. As I was finishing up the zucchini, one of the kids came in and said, "Daddy says the beans need to be picked." Inwardly, I groaned, but I turned off the stove and went out.

Now flash back to last fall when Dan was pre-ordering the seeds. I said oh, let's get green beans. Dan said, "Are you going to pick them?" Oh sure, I said. Flash forward again to this summer and the NINE rows of beans. That I have picked on multiple occasions. So here I am picking beans in the mud (and yes, they really did need to be picked) while the kids are watching and eating beans. Dan was busy picking the rest of the garden. And for the record, I got to the freezing of the corn that afternoon and Dan helped do all of it. Ooh, I just had a vision! Flash forward a few years and there I am saying, okay kids, let's go pick the beans. And I leisurely pick my row while the kids do the rest. :)

And here is that sweet little Anne, munching on a green bean. They sure do taste good right out of the garden.

Now we get to the lazy man's (or woman's) way. Last Friday, I went out to pick beans and I picked away for a while. The plants were starting to shrivel up and die in spots. Dan had the brilliant idea to just pull up all the bean plants and then pick the beans off, since they were pretty much done anyway.

So then I got to sit in my lawn chair and pick beans! The kids all had to go get their chairs and "help," but they mostly just ate them.

Back to the not lazy part. While the kids were napping, Dan and I cut off all the stems, and washed the beans. Here are most of them:

If those plastic tubs look familiar to you, they probably are. They came from the hospital, with each child's birth, you know, the tub of stuff they send home with you. They are handy with all of this produce.

Dan fired up the turkey fryer burner and blanched the beans outside. When he brought each batch in, I put it in an ice-water bath. We went through a lot of ice. Luckily, I had remembered to fill up some Cool Whip containers with water and stick them in the freezer to make extra ice.
After the beans cooled off, I drained them and then put them into freezer bags. I put a pound of green beans in each bag and we got 19 bags that day. A successful green bean harvest!