My favorite bean is probably fresh limas. Frozen, canned, or dried limas do not compare to the ones picked and shelled from the garden. This of course does not come without a fair amount of work. These fantastic beans must be grown, picked, shelled and cooked. To me this is a minor price to pay for a delicious nutritious meal, especially if you enjoy gardening like I do.
I grow to varieties of lima beans, bush and pole. My bush once looked like this:
And now after producing for over a month (and getting chewed on by beetles of course) they look like this:
My pole beans have matured nicely also, but started producing a few weeks later than the bush variety. Here they are in May:
And just a couple days ago:
In addition to the taste, other thing I like about lima beans is they are easier to harvest than regular string beans which need to be picked every two or three days. I harvest limas once a week. Of course the downside is the shelling.
So this week was my seventh harvest and probably my best so far.
And after about a half hour of shelling:
I like using my limas two ways. The first is a strait lima bean dish prepared with some of my Pontiac Red Potatoes mixed with caramelized onions.
I just sauté the onions and add the potatoes and limas with a little water and turn the heat down to low. After simmering for 20 or 30 minutes they are ready.
I also like them in a vegetable soup. If I have a lot of limas I don’t put many other vegetables in however. I usually include carrots, celery, onions and a little tomato for color. In this one I also added some asparagus but not many (asparagus season is long over for me so I had to buy these). I like the focus to be on my fresh limas since I enjoy them so much.
And here is the finished product served with pasta.
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