How many times in your growing years, did your Mother tell you, "Eat your Vegetables?" I bet we all were told that more than we like but we were also told that we are a product of what we eat, RIGHT? I was told that so much, but gratefully eating vegetables was instilled in me just like music, cooking and other talents and skills. I grew up in a home where most of our back yard of our 1/4 acre home, was filled with a garden. We had more vegetables than we ever needed, and my Dad would always say, "Mother, all those vegetables could feed an Army." Guess what, they did, and not just the army of my family that lived in my house, but neighbors, friends and anyone my mother thought could benefit from our garden.
Mom grew a lot of different kinds of vegetables. Some of them were experiments to see what she could get her kids to eat, but eventually and after a few years, she figured it out. She learned that her family enjoyed Green beans, sweet peppers, raspberries, fruit from fruit trees, grapes from vines, and lots and lots of tomatoes. Now along with those kinds of plants, our garden grew other kinds of plants, commonly called weeds and guess who you think got the glorious job to pull those weeds? You guessed it, her kids. We had at times as many weeds to pull as there were plants planted in the garden. One time, my brother in his youth, found some weed spray that was guaranteed to kill anything it touched. He thought he would make our lives easier, by spraying the weeds and then they would just shrivel up and die. He proceeded, without the permission of either of our parents, and went around the perimeter of the garden, spraying. A few days later, we all noticed that the weeds were shriveling up, which was great, but we also noticed that the plants were shriveling up too. My Mother couldn't figure it out for the longest time, why she watered and watered them, but they just continued to shrivel up and die.
Finally one day, a few weeks had gone by when my Mother received a knock at our door. She answered it to see a very angry neighbor, Mr. Shafter, almost frothing at the mouth, with his brow so scrunched up that it looked like furrows in the soil. He began to yell and scream saying, Someone in your family has killed my Pyracantha bushes all along the backside of his home, that boardered with our garden. He said that he had spent 20 years growing them, pruning them and making them a thing of beauty, but someone has killed his plants. Of course my mother knew nothing of it, and as gracefully as she could, tried to quail his anger by offering him a bunch of her fresh garden produce and said she would get to the bottom of it. Mr. Shafter didn't want any of her produce, he just wanted the head of the person who killed his Pyracantha bushes.
After Mr. Shafter left, Mother gathered her quaking children around her and asked if any of us knew what happened to Mr. Shafters bushes? Somehow it came out that my brother had spayed the weeds around the perimeter of our garden, and maybe got some of the spray on his bushes. Marching my brother outside to see about those bushes, Mother and my brother somehow figured out a way to make up for the huge and innocent mistake he had made. I'd have to ask him to know how they rectified 20 years of growing and manicuring and trimming, to make up for killing them, but somehow things were set aright. I do know that Mr. Shafter never spoke to us again, but that was ok with most of us, because he wasn't a very kind and friendly man anyway.
One good thing did come of my brothers gargantuan mistake with the weed killer, and that was that my mother would only let us eat part of the produce in the garden that was not very close to where he sprayed, for fear it would poison us all, and many of the plants in our garden died along with Mr. Shafters Pyracantha bushes.
Well, that is my veggie story but my current one is that I have found some beautiful, and delicious produce in Costco. Let me first start with their green beans. They have these 2 lb bags of french cut green beans, you know the ones that are straight, long and slim, but look so uniform in size, unlike the bumpy warty kind that most people grow in their gardens. My mother grew the warty kinds, and they never tasted as good as the ones that Costco sells. I will buy a whole bag of these, and steam them, just until they are tender, and then quickly rinse them under the water in the kitchen tap. This prevents them from cooking any longer and becoming soggy and overcooked, but also greens them up. Steaming and cooking turns the color of beans from a bright green color to more of a dull green, but rinse them under cold water, and they magically resume their natural before cooking color, and maybe even a little brighter.
My husband and I will then enjoy eating them with meals, add them to soups and stir frys,but my favorite is to snack on them. That's right, snack on cold green beans is such a treat. Simply get a dollup or two of mayonaise (which you can also buy at Costco) and set it on your plate, and start dipping your cold green beans in it. The taste to me is much like a steamed artichoke, which is another favorite vegetable of mine, and Costco carries those during certain seasons.
The other veggie that I absolutely love that Costco carries year round is the Windset Farms sweet mini peppers. When I first spotted them in the store, I thought, "Why would I want to buy those, they aren't even fully developed. " Actually they are, and as a result of being mini peppers, they are so much more sweet than their cousin, sweet bell peppers. These come in 3 different colors, Red, which are my favorite, yellow and orange, and surprisingly, their flavor varies as well. It takes me about 2 weeks to use a whole bag of them up, but they last and don't begin rotting if they are kept refrigerated in the vege compartment.
I use these cute little peppers in so many of my recipes, from Scrambled egg breakfast meals, to soups, and stir fries, and my favorite.... snacking. These sweet and crisp little mini peppers are perfect to dip in either home made ranch dressing dip or regular salad ranch dressing, which by the way, also is sold at Costco! I also serve them with different cheeses and my favorite is the soft cheeses, from plain Philadelphia Cream cheese sold in a large tub at Costco, but other soft cheeses like Brie and seasoned ones, also sold in the cheese section at Costco.
I highly recommend everyone try them, and learn to enjoy the sweetness of natural vegetables, and get a little healthier. I won't go into the different vitamins and minerals that they contain, and you will benefit from, but you can do that by going to the internet and googling it. Enjoy!
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