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If you like Indian food at all, or want a new way to prepare green beans, try this recipe. I’ve been making it every other week since green beans came into season at our CSA. Like many of my favorites, it’s from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian (read a book review at Epicurious). Serve it with rice and/or naan, and curry or an Indian lentil or chickpea dish (or some “indian food from a box” or can, such as available at Trader Joe’s if you’re pressed for time), and you’re golden. It reheats well.
Another nice addition to the meal is “speedy raita” - peel, deseed, and chop a cucumber. Toss with plain unsweetened yogurt, a teaspoon of mustard seeds, some cumin (up to 1 tsp), and some cayenne if you want the heat.

The action is fast and furious at the beginning, so have everything (or at least everything up to tomato and cilantro) in place before you begin cooking. Once the prep work is done, it takes about 15 minutes to cook.

Green Beans with Cumin and Fennel

2 to 3 Tab peanut or canola oil
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds (i’ve been using anise seeds)

2 good-sized shallots or 1 small onion (about 1.5 oz), peeled and cut into fine slices
1 garlic clove, peeled and cut into fine slices
1 1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and cut into very fine slivers

1 lb green beans, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
1/4 tsp cayenne (or to taste)
1 1/4 tsp salt

1 small tomato (2 oz), chopped
3 Tab finely chopped fresh cilantro (I’ve never had any on hand!)

Put the oil in a large frying pan and set over medium-high heat. When very hot, add the cumin and fennel seeds and stir for a few seconds. Quickly add the shallots, garlic, and ginger (I mix these in one bowl ahead of time). Stir for about a minute, or until lightly browned. Add the beans and stir another 2 minutes. Add the coriander, cumin, turmeric, and cayenne (again, I mix these in a small bowl ahead of time) and stir a few times. Add 1/2 cup of water and the salt and bring to a simmer. Stir and cover. Turn the heat to low and cook gently for 5 minutes. Add the tomato and cilantro. Stir, cover, and cook for about 4 to 5 minutes, or until the beans are tender.

When I go to the Farmer’s Market, I make my rounds of various vendors. I start at my CSA where I load up my big green tyvek bag with the ‘extras’ and then grab my box. I put these in the car or bike trailer and then make my rounds of the other vendors. The CSA covers most of our vegetable needs, so the rest of the trip focuses on fruits and sundries.

I have little nicknames I use when thinking of the vendors or when talking about them to T-boy. We have “the cookie lady” - she also sells eggs, and occasional produce, but T-boy insists we visit her for cookies (we usually get PB cookies with chocolate chips, or ginger snaps). There’s also the “Turkish cookie lady”, who sells a wider variety of baked goods with less sugar than is typical in the US, including a tahini ’sweet’ roll that’s delightful. C-boy and Z-boy vastly prefer the cider from one orchard, so I always buy that from my “apple lady” (although in the late spring she was my “rhubarb lady“!).

And then there’s the “plum man.” He wears a black cowboy hat and is unassuming, straightforward, and soft-spoken. Ask him how a certain variety of plum tastes, and he might give you some characteristics (sweet or tart or …) or he might just say “how do I describe a taste? I just can’t do it.” But he sells an amazing variety of plums (along with other things, but he’s got the biggest variety of plums of anyone, so “plum man” he is!). He starts with small red plums, then moved on to yellow plums. Now he has a different (larger) red variety, and the italian plums should be coming in soon.

Michigan cherries at top left, tiny plums at bottom right. Notice the similarity in size (if not color).

This summer I’ve added “the cherry people” to my rotation. As with the plum man, they sell lots of different things, but I stop there for cherries. Every week I buy 2 quarts. He puts them into a plastic sack, and I store it in my fruit crisper drawer at home, washing them as I need them. One day a few weeks ago, I reached into the drawer and grabbed a few cherries to finish off my breakfast. I stuck one in my mouth, took a bite, and thought “that’s a weird cherry. Maybe it went bad?” I popped the next one in, again thought “that texture is all wrong. How bizarre!” - and then realized that I’d grabbed some of those tiny plums. There was nothing wrong with the plums as plums, believe me, but it was a shock when I was expecting cherries. I got yellow plums the next week, to avoid suffering through a repeat, and by now the plums are bigger so I’m safe.

Last week Z-boy decided he liked cherries. He decided this at a friend’s house, where he somehow discovered the joy of spitting out the pits. (The previous day, he rejected cherries when offered at home, in part because of the pits!) Inspired by his big brother, T-boy now eats cherries, too (although I have to pit his). So now I have competition for my cherries - I might have to start buying 3 quarts! Cherry season has been going since early July or maybe late June, but I fear the season will end too soon (and I’m afraid to ask). But there’s still a few more varieties of plums to work through, and some more peach varieties (not to mention the nectarines that rival the ones I ate while working at Yellowstone) before we launch into apple season, so I think we’ll be in stone fruit heaven for a few more weeks. Now if we could just convince C-boy to join us…

A few weeks ago, Z-boy turned to me in the kitchen one night and said: “Tell me the truth. Do you put on heelys and skate around the house after I go to bed?” Where this came from, I have no idea, but after assuring him I did not, he proceeded to ask “Do you have any other secrets you’re hiding from me?”

Z-boy has been obsessed with skateboarding for months now, so Jonski Papa read him the biography of a current skateboard phenom, Andy Mac. Although they’ve been visiting various skateboard parks in this part of the state this summer (Z-boy on his skateboard, C-boy on inline skates), T-boy usually stays home. He’s too little for skate parks, plus he still needs someone to hold him up while skating. So I was surprised while planning a trip to the library the other day when T-boy insisted he get a book about Andy Mac. I dutifully found the book, and let him carry it on the way home. He showed it to his dad and proudly announced “We got a book about Andy Mac!” “Oh. What does Andy Mac do?” his dad asked (expecting to hear something along the lines of “ride a skateboard”. “He drops in!” T-boy replied. The title of the book, in case you didn’t follow the link, is Dropping In With Andy Mac (’dropping in’ is the name of a particular skateboard trick).

We also got 2 picture books about skateboarding on that same trip: Cosmo Zooms and Skateboard Mom. You can probably guess the plot of the latter book from the title (if you can’t, here it is: boy gets skateboard for his birthday, mom grabs it away and rushes out the door to show her stuff). But what got me was when we finished the book and I turned to the back cover and saw: “You better ask your mom what surprises she has up her sleeve…” Deja vu! Wasn’t Z-boy doing that just the week before? Eerie.

As it turns out, the author of this book used to be on an amateur skateboard team as a kid, and has founded The International Society of Skateboarding Moms which is “about making time for play, no matter your age.” I really wish I were better about making time for play, or had a more playful spirit, but I just don’t see myself stepping on a skateboard any time soon. A scooter is okay, but that’s about as extreme as I’m willing to go for the time being!

(And no, I’m not going to tell you what surprises I have up my sleeve - at least not today!)

More great back formations from toddler minds:

At one point when C-boy was little, we branched out and added Kix to his prepared cereal repertoire. (They are, after all, kid-tested and mother-approved!) He decided that each little ball should be called a “kick”, as in “can I have one more kick?” (”kik”, perhaps?)

Ideally in our family, you change into “day clothes” before going downstairs in the morning. You definitely wear “day clothes” to go outside (exceptions: pajama shirts are allowed, especially if they are dearly beloved space-themed or otherwise cool; fleece footie pajamas have been allowed at times in winter). T-boy has decided that the singular form of “clothes” is “clo”, as in “I need a day clo shirt” or (more likely, in recent weeks) “I don’t like that clo!”