Last week I started teaching for the summer; it’s a really intense class, and it’s pretty much sucked my will to cook (or do anything) every evening after I get home. Hence the lack of posts… sorry about that! I have plans to make a number of things today, and a few things to post from last week, so hopefully that will make up for it. This post is pretty simple, but I wanted to show off my first produce of the summer from my container garden!

I’m growing a number of things – tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and beans – but the first things that were ripe for the picking were the green beans. They’re a bush bean variety called Kentucky Dreamer, which is a variant of the more well known Kentucky Wonder bean. And boy are they tasty: sweet and crisp. I picked a number of them and wanted to have them as a side, so I decided to keep it simple and sauté them so that they wouldn’t get overcooked or lost in a sauce.

I only had a handful of beans, so I only used half a shallot, chopped.

I sautéed the shallot in olive oil until it was browned, then threw in the green beans for only a few minutes.

And that’s it: fresh, home-grown green beans, sautéed in olive oil and shallots for a few minutes. Just barely cooked, warm with a good crunch and nothing to cover up that delicious flavor.