A MAN WITH A PAST

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (6/21/2014)

 

          Jeff Grayson, the general manager of Bed, Bath, and Beyond, is a man with a past, particularly some ancestors who moved from west Texas to Fort Verde, Arizona, after a shootout over a dispute over fencing range land.  In the latter part of the 19^th century, one of the three Casner brothers shot a man in self-defense, and after the incident the brothers thought their futures might be brighter in Arizona than Deaf Smith County, Texas.  Eventually, they left their names imprinted on the Arizona map with Casner Mountain near Sedona. 

 

          Grayson, a member of the Casner clan, is a more peaceable man, having given up the family tradition of shootouts, herding cattle, grazing sheep, and railroading for merchandizing.  His mother is an engineer on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, based out of Winslow and the designer of the landscaping at the Sedona airport, as well.

 

          Of course, Jeff is built for the rugged life, a footballer, tall, strongly built, dark skinned with curly black hair with an open, cheery face and smile.  At first glance, he’s a little intimidating, but at second glance, warm and friendly, the kind of man a person would want on his side.  And his backyard is the kind of place needing a man strongly built and one with a cheery disposition.

 

          Over several years using native, volcanic rock he patiently built a three-tiered, cascading water fall just off his back deck.  From the pictures it was a thing of beauty, assuaging the human spirit with the sound of falling and babbling water.      

 

          However, he discovered that his backyard was overrun with moles rather than cattle and sheep, leaving piles of scat here and there in tunnels throughout his waterfalls.  He had built the whole affair without benefit of mortar after the fashion of the Anasazi, leaving ample space for the moles to travel.  For fear of the Hantavirus which had already gotten a foothold in Coconino County he knew that he had to get rid of the moles and their scat.  That meant dismantling his water falls. 

 

          Apparently, his moles are not unique to his backyard, several of his neighbors having reported moles in their backyards.  Grayson’s problem is that he likes to garden.  His backyard sports a large vegetable bed with tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, string beans, zucchini, peppers, and chilies.  A native Arizonan, he’s particularly fond of his Anaheim chilies.  Moles favor some of his vegetables, the water, and bird seed he had hung from feeders through his yard.  He particularly feared for the welfare of his beloved golden retriever.

 

          Some gardeners are haphazard with no apparent design to their gardens, sticking plants in the ground with whatever comes to mind at the moment.  Others have a design, usually based on some central feature in the backyard.  Jeff’s design is built around his back deck which is covered, making it a cool place in the afternoon’s heat.  He likes to sit there and entertain his friends there.  Extending beyond the deck are flagstones with clover between the stones.  Over to one side of the deck are a large, sophisticated grill and a smoker.  Jeff favors barbequed

smoked pork loin and ribs, especially for his Sunday football gatherings, starting

at ten in the morning and ending at eight at night.  In others words, his garden is

organized around having a good time with his friends.  Football and barbeque

aren’t all that bad as focal points for a backyard’s design.

 

Being a native Arizonan, Grayson understands the importance of trees because in the desert there are so few of them.  Trees are not only beautiful to look at and valuable because they bear fruit, but also because they offer shade.  Next to the deck is an old, large ponderosa pine with gnarled roots breaking through the cracks in the flagstones.  They’re like the arms of an old friend offering shade.  Also, Grayson has planted several deciduous trees, also offering shade, but also a delightfully cool green, soothing the eyes and spirit.

 

          Happily, Grayson’s strength and good cheer will stand him in good stead as he rebuilds his Sunday afternoon idyll.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith email at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

 

 

         

DREAM, WAKE UP, AND WORK

Tam Nguyen

 

“If you want your dreams to come true, you need to wake up and work”.  That’s how my Father woke us up early in the morning.  He would come in and throw back mosquito netting, saying, “Wake up. The sun is rising.  The cock is crowing.” 

 

We did not have many sweaters for choosing which one would wear for each day.  Occasionally, we have new clothes, but during the year, we wore what we have.  As kids we didn't know when we dress poorly and get a cold, running nose, and nose and ear infection.  And during the day, pretty much the older sister take care younger brother and sister.  We had plenty of fun, running out in the rain, taking a free shower.  The water would get into our ears, but we did not stop because we feel so much fun.

 

I had a lot fun and also had an ear infection.  Unlucky for me that my body’s immune system does not do good at healing.  I also did not have antibiotic to treating, either.  I slowed down.  Whenever my friend saw my running nose, they said, "Tam, you got two worms under your nose.”  My ear had liquid running out with bad smell.  Sometimes it would dry out and a piece of stuff still stuck inside my ear and blocked my hearing with the wax.

 

I also changed myself to become bossy and harder.  My voice became louder and louder.  When I had conversation, my voice was like a big fight with yelling.  When I lost my hearing, I crawled inside myself, but my Father was there for me, on my side during my childhood.  He filled me with stories for my mind.

 

At that time, during 80’s and 90’s, television was a luxury and expensive, too, but my Father taught me using my mind to create television by image and keep scene in the mind to remember things, like hearing.

 

One other of stage of meditation is to travel by my own spirits.  I was not really good except when I go to bed.  I talked to him about my dream.  He always encouraged me to keep my dreams and live with them.  It was painful to live with dreams and notice that I lost hearing.  I barely heard the sounds of around me.  My father pointed out for me that in the quiet there are the micro sounds under of silence and to listen to the micro sounds.  It was trick for me manage my life with all of that.  Wake up and work to let dream come true, but in the mean time, I had to sleep to get the dream.

 

I held the attitude and moved on, until I got myself fixing my lost hearing.  The sound of leaking of pipe at the sink, I explored myself, and I realized I can hear it.  The tears ran down.  The tick tock of the wall repeat it.  A long time since last time I hear that sound and question my father about the tick tock, and I understood his answer way back then.  Seeing it is heaing it.  I can hear the wind with the tone of it.  It is simple but gave me happiness.  

 

Since I got hearing back, I realized that I was in prison myself for so long.  I just live the life for myself more than I can care for things going on around me.  And now, I am free, but it also the sound blast me too much.  Hearing the sounds and my brain process more information.  I am aware, and I catch up with 20 years lost.  I can hear the wind, and I feel how hard for leaves moving and made tone of sound higher.  

 

I walk out my prison and free myself.  Giving back joy, happy with every second and hearing the birds singing in the early morning.  I used to tear the petals of flowers to look inside with curious where it stores the aroma when I was bored.  Now with my hearing I went to school to learn about the aroma.

Tam Nyugen is a student at NAU and The Literacy Center.  Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

A HARVEST SANS MERCI

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (6/9/2014)

 

          Some whine about our short growing season in the high country, sometimes disparaging our gorgeous setting by comparing it unfavorably to hot, muggy, and disagreeable places such as Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.  Sadly, these malcontents don’t mention our long growing season for weeds.  If they’re eager for the harvest, look around.  The land is rich with burgeoning, comely maladies waiting to be plucked.

 

          Unwelcome plants, weeds are fast growing, ingenious, and supernaturally resourceful.  They’re best harvested when immature before they go to seed, becoming a scourge, casting their malice upon the land.

 

The most notorious weed and one of the earliest is cheat grass (Bromus tectorum), a truly despicable and aptly named form of vegetation.  With its lateral roots it sucks up moisture from the soil, cheating other vegetation of moisture.  Capable of displacing every thing else, especially native vegetation, it’s easily combustible, making it a fire danger.  A seedy profligate, it grows almost anywhere, especially soils that have been disturbed by an errant contractor.  Pull it as soon as it’s seen.  A native of Asia Minor, it has no known adversaries, save indignant gardeners.  Easily pulled, it should be thrown in a trash bag and sent to Environmental Services via the garbage truck. 

The next on the unwelcome list is the scotch thistle.  When the Romans conquered England in 41 A.D., they brought with them along with bathing the scotch thistle (Onopordium acanthium) which has its origins in the Mediterranean basin.  It eventually hopped over Hadrian’s Wall, the Roman barrier defending Roman England from the Scots to the north.

 

The scotch thistle flourished in Scotland where it proved itself a defense against Viking invaders.  In a nighttime sneak attack upon Scotland, the Norse stumbled into a thicket of scotch thistles.  Their cries of pain awakened the inhabitants who drove them back into the sea.

 

Imported into the United States as an ornamental shrub because of its beautiful flowers, it became an invasive, noxious weed.  The Latin phrase Nemo Me Impune Lacessit  (No One Injuries Me Unpunished) is on the national emblem of Scotland along with the scotch thistle.  While wearing leather gloves and chest plate, pull them, put them in a plastic garden bag, and dispatch them to the county dump.

Oddly, it’s a cousin to the artichoke (Cynara scolymus), both being members of the tribe Cynareae which takes its name from the Greek word for dog because their bracts look like the teeth of a snarling dog.   It’s a delightful vegetable with anti-oxidant and anti-cholesterol benefits.  Artichokes can be grown in Flagstaff just as can scotch thistles; however, they aren’t nearly as tasty as those grown in Castroville, California.

 

Another member of the tribe Cynareae is the Centaurae diffusa, commonly called the diffuse knapweed which in the fall and winter turns into the tumbleweed.  It, too, has snarling dog’s teeth.  The word cynic comes from the Latin word for dog, cynicus.  Cynics are toxic, baring their ideological teeth, claiming that everything is rotten save themselves.

 

The diffuse knapweed, a true cynic, poisons the soil around it so that nothing else can grow save itself.  It’s called allelopathy after the Greek allos and pathos via French which together mean “others’ suffering.”  The plant releases chemicals which are toxic to neighboring plants.  Just as cynics poison an intellectual environment, so do diffuse knapweeds poison a horticultural environment, eliminating their competition by toxicity.  A close misanthropy is the German schadenfreude which means joy at another’s harm. 

 

One plant can produce 18,000 seeds, spreading them

on the wind as its tumbles over the land.  A genuinely ugly plant, it is scraggly, prickly, and unappealing, with no known benefits.  If it had been available to Moses, it surely would’ve been a better plague than frogs (EX. 8:1-7.)

 

When destroying it, it should be pulled out, root and branch, before it goes to seed, put into plastic garbage bags, and dispatched to an horticultural netherworld of demons, dragons, and other malignancies.

 

The scotch thistle, diffuse knapweed and cheat grass have arrived.  Show them no mercy.  As with Samson of old, “smite them hip and thigh (Judges 15:18).”  Sans merci.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

         

            

UNDERGROUND ASIAN VEGETABLES

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (5/28/2014)

 

          One of the rewards of tutoring people in English is learning a lot about foreign cultures.  For instance, many Asian languages do not have past or future tenses which must be a relief after trying to figure out the meaning of the future perfect which denotes an action that has been completed cast into the future.  In other words, it’s a fait accompli that hasn’t happened yet, an hubristic absurdity.  The Asians tell the tense by the context, “I go home yesterday,” not by a change in the verb.

 

          But the best reward is learning about food.  One of the most useful for the American taste is the root vegetable, daikon which is a mild, slightly sweet radish.  The word itself is Japanese and means “large root.”  A significant vegetable in Asian cuisine, it actually originated in the Mediterranean basin about 500 B.C. and was brought to China by traders.

 

Happily, it can be grown easily in the high country.  My friend, Tam Nyuyen, tells me that the most useful variety is the white daikon, called the icicle.  Shaped much as a carrot, it is white, and as with the carrot, it needs deep soil, preferably a raised bed of loose, friable soil free of rocks.  The rocks can cause misshapen roots.  Also, it is low in calories while being nutritionally rich. 

 

       Daikon can be baked, boiled, or steamed and is particularly good slowly roasted with mixed vegetables, such as butternut squash, carrots, red onions, small red potatoes, cherry tomatoes, artichoke bottoms, zucchini, and what have you.  Set the oven at 400º, toss the vegetables with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste, place in a 25 x 30 inch roasting pan, and put in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes.  Remove from the oven, drizzle with balsamic vinegar, and roast another five minutes. 

 

Also, it’s delightful in a carrot and daikon salad in which both the carrots and the diakon are peeled in strips and served with an Asian dressing and perhaps some pine nuts. 

 

          Requiring a deep, loose, fertile soul, daikon seeds should be planted about an inch deep and two inches apart.  Once they have sprouted, they should be thinned to six inches apart.  They should be watered regularly, keeping the soil damp but not soggy.  Their fertilizer should be low in nitrogen, as in a 5-10-10 ratio.

 

          They generally mature in about sixty days which allows for successive plantings in the high country; however, they can be pulled before they mature.

 

          Our next underground vegetable is another radish, the watermelon radish which is a Chinese heirloom.  However, this radish is not long and thin, but plump and round about two to three inches in diameter.  It is better when pulled before its full maturity, lest it become pulpy.  When sliced, this radish appears as if were a small watermelon with a white outer ring and interior striations of magenta and pink.  As with daikon, it can be fried, baked, broiled, and boiled and can be eaten cooked or raw.  They do particularly well in salads, offering as slightly peppery, minty taste as well as lavish color, perking up some bland appearing lettuce.  If sliced, they should be sliced thin.  They’re a charming accent when added to a daikon and carrot salad.

 

          An interesting recipe that would appeal to people who savor French fries, potato chips, corn chips, and other fried crunchies is baked watermelon radish chips.  It has the appeal of color which most chips and fries lack and also a bright taste, other than  salt, to wake up the palate.

 

          Wash two or three watermelon radishes and then slice them to uniform thinness.  Preheat the oven to 325º.  Place the sliced radishes in a bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper, thyme, dried basil.  Mix thoroughly and place them evenly on a baking sheet.  If fancy, use a parchment sheet.  Bake ten to fifteen minutes, turn over, and bake another ten to fifteen minutes.  If they’re sliced thick, it may take 25 minutes, but thin is better.  They go well with baked salmon.

 

          Bon appétit avec des radis chinois.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

 

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun in which this article appeared May 31, 2014.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.  

 

 

 

 

         

 

         

 

 

 

GOOGLING A PROXIMITY

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (5/7/2014)

 

In his book Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, Nikil Savala recounts a conversation with an executive at Google in which Saval asked the executive about the “favorite hangout spot” in their complex of cubed offices.  Saval guessed that it would be the fresh juice bar.  The executive replied that it wasn’t the fresh juice so much as it was to the juice bar’s floor-to-ceiling windows, letting in a glimpse of “the green  and the California late afternoon springtime sun” and also “It’s the proximity to nature.”

 

The cubed office workers at Google experienced the same thing that animates gardeners, a proximity to nature, only the folks at Google were looking through “a glass, darkly,” not savoring a “face to face” taste of a fresh tomato.  As with so much of our modern digital life, it was second-hand. 

 

The fact is that human beings were hunters and gatherers for a much longer time than they’ve been cubed in offices.  Human systems are more attuned to the natural world than the unnatural.  God designed us to live in a garden with its fresh air, grass, flowers, vegetables, fruits, and trees, not sterile, colorless workspaces.  This connection with nature is even built in to our shoes and boots.  Many of them have a thin, soft layer in the foot-bed replicating the feel of walking on grass.  Human feet were not designed for concrete or asphalt but grass and soil.

 

It’s not only the cubes, but it’s also the bland colors of the cubes that make modern offices so harmlessly ominous, putting distance between modern human beings and their psychic and physical nature.  Sitting in a downtown restaurant, two young women were having dinner together, not talking to each other, but diddling with their i-Pads.  I wondered if they’d lost the ability to hold a conversation, much less say hello.  One of my first assignments while interning at UCLA’s Neuro-psychiatric Institute was to take five or six patients out onto Westwood Boulevard and teach them how to look at strangers in the eye, smile and say hello, such as checkers at a supermarket.  They had lost contact with what we call “reality.”

 

The “reality” with which they had lost contact is the stuff of a garden.  It was the reality of the hunters and gatherers.  This contact with reality is also one of the reasons so many people have cats and dogs in their homes.  Stroking the soft fur on a dog’s back is a far more spiritually rewarding experience than staring at a screen and mashing keys.

 

          Cicero, the great Roman orator, said, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”  He probably should’ve added a bed and a kitchen, but there it is, a garden.  Gardening, amongst other things, is a proximity to nature, and without that proximity we lose our contact with reality.  This is why it is so puzzling to see yards covered with gravel, bearing a dreadful similarity to the cubed office, harmlessly ominous, devoid of reality. 

 

          It’s not that anyone wants to return to the marginal life of the hunters and gatherers, literally living from hand to mouth every day of their lives.  It is that in the evolutionary scheme of creation our souls and our bodies developed to respond to a reality we call nature.  One of the corrosive effects of civilization, in addition to its many artificial splendors, is a gradual alienation from that reality.  The cubed office is a prime example.  As I sat in that restaurant watching those two young women, the word “android” came to mind.

 

A garden, along with cats and dogs, connects, not approximates, us with the reality that makes us human.  No romantic “return to nature,” a garden is a necessity amidst all the faux alternate virtual realities enveloping of souls.  A floor to ceiling window is not enough.  Along with the pathos of the fall of the man and the woman, the idyllic “hunters and gatherers” theme embedded in the story of the Garden of Eden is a profound metaphor for an understanding of our humanity.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

 

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com. 

THE ANSWER MAN: Fish Tacos

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (4/30/2014)

 

Q.  Dear Answer Man, Abigail here.  I hate to bother you again.  It’s about Rusty.  He’s been in trouble.  He was arrested outside San Felipe’s Cantina downtown for rioting.  He said San Felipe’s was cool, no problemo.  He was getting a fish taco and a beer with Buzz, his friend from the garage down on “66”, when, all of a sudden, all hell broke loose on the street.  He says he and Buzz went out to see what was going on and got jostled around.  Somebody spilled a beer on him, and low and behold, he and Buzz were just swept up in this crowd of young street thugs.  He says the cops said he stunk of booze, and “they just corralled us, cuffed us, and hauled us off to jail.  They didn’t even ask us what we was doin’ there.”     

 

I had to go down to the jail and get him out.  I was so ashamed.  Nothing has ever happened like this in our family before.  Turns out that he wasn’t drunk.  I asked him what he was doing down at San Felipe’s, especially for a man his age.  After he got a little puffed out, he said that he and Buzz have been thinking about doing a study of fish tacos in Flagstaff, and “what better place to start than San Felipe’s Cantina?”

 

Needless to say, he’s mortified by what happened.  I asked him whether or not he and Buzz were studying the kind of fish used and the seasonings.  He said, “Hell, no, Abby, we was just running a taste test, nothing fancy like you learn at Master Gardeners, no high-falutin’ , hoity-toity stuff.  We wasn’t checkin’ out the herbs and stuff like that.”

 

I said, “You mean you and Buzz plan to just go around town checking out the fish tacos and drinking beer?”  “Yep, that’s about it.”

 

What do you think I ought to do, Answer Man?

 

          A.  Well, I think you’d better keep him at home for his own sake.  He’s not safe running loose around town on his own.  Buzz doesn’t sound like much of safety net, either.  If you want to keep a man at home, feed him something better than he can get elsewhere, and it sounds like Rusty’s the kind of man whose heart’s in his belly.  You can start by making better tacos at home than he can find in the bars throughout town.  Just set them up with a TV so that they can watch Highway thru Hell or Alaska State Troopers.   That way they’ll think they’re in some bar down town. 

 

          Q.  What’s better about fish tacos at home?

 

          A.  The ingredients: fresh purple cabbage, fresh cilantro, and fresh tomatoes.  The vegetables you get at most bars are at least two days old, and old cabbage takes on airs.  Sometimes, the taco joints try slipping in lettuce instead of cabbage, and any fish taco aficionado knows that purple cabbage is necessary to have an authentic fish taco.  Lettuce is for cheeseburgers, not tacos.  Lettuce is so gringo.

 

Flagstaff is purple cabbage, tomato, and cilantro growing territory, and, besides, home-grown tomatoes are the best kind of tomatoes to eat.   You’ve got the best fish taco fixin’s right in your backyard garden.

 

Q.  I just don’t know, Answer Man.  I suspect Rusty and Buzz like the smell of stale beer you get in those joints.  Rusty even likes cold pizza and flat beer for breakfast.  Reminds him of the semester he spent in college.

 

A.  I know what’ll get him: home-grown chilis, freshly picked, the kind that’ll knock his socks off.  You can even get him involved in growing them.  Jalapeños do well in Flagstaff, and you’ll be needing them for a little kick in the salsa.  Maybe you can get Rusty to smoke them to get some chipotles for the salsa.

 

Q.  Well, what about the fish?

A.  Any white fish will do.  Make sure it doesn’t smell.  Batter and deep fry it.  Fat tastes better.  Fish is better for you grilled, but it’s crunchier and tastes better deep fried.  Olé! 

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

A QUADRIPLEX OF BACKYARD DELIGHTS

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (4/15/2014)

 

 

          In the Old Testament story of Jacob and Esau, Esau sold his birthright, as the oldest brother, to Jacob for “a pottage of red lentils.”  As the story goes, Jacob dwelt in the tents with the women while Esau had the smell of the field and hunt.  Famished from a hunt, Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for the stew of lentils (Gen. 25:27-34.)  The account is about 4,000 years old.  Peas, lentils, and chickpeas were used for food as early as 8,000 years ago during the Neolithic Age, and probably earlier, in Central Asia and the southern and eastern Mediterranean basin.  The Neolithic age is the spread of time when our ancestors moved from being hunters and gatherers into cultivated agriculture and husbandry.

 

          These ancient legumes: peas, lentils, and chickpeas, aren’t to be confused with Phaseolus vulgaris which is Latin for the common bean.  Actually, phaseolus is the Latin for small boat which the open pod resembles.  The kidney beans we eat today come from Mesoamerica or what is now Central America and Peru, first appearing about 7,000 years ago.  Along with tomatoes they were the culinary gifts of the New World to the Old World by way of Columbus and his successors.

 

          Ironically, of the three ancients, some peas (Pisum sativum) have come down to us as sugar snaps which developed by serendipitously crossing peas with Chinese snow peas in 1979 at a horticultural research facility in Twin Falls, Idaho.  Along with snow peas, the French call sugar snaps mange tout, “eat it all,” meaning that the pod as well as the peas is eaten.  They are one of the premier delights of backyard gardening and the first in our quadriplex of backyard delights.  Grown in the backyard or in a tub on a deck, they’re sweet, crisp, and munchy, unlike the starchy and flaccid substitutes found in grocery stores.  

 

          By the way, Pisum sativum is Latin for a cultivated pea which implies that wild peas were domesticated during the Neolithic period.  Also, it further implies that they eaten as wild peas long before their domestication.  They were probably eaten dry, ground into a pea meal.  

          The rest of our quadriplex is now a triplex, not of peas but of bean, our old Latin friend, the Phaseolus vulgaris, the common bean, only ours aren’t so common.  The first that comes to mind is La Comtesse de Chambord, a rare, small, thin rice bean.  About four inches long, it’s sweet when eaten raw and immature much like snow peas and sugar snaps and is used in salads.  It’s tasty when blanched or sautéed.  Also, when mature and dried, the bean can be cooked much like rice only with a richer and nuttier flavor.  Since it’s not produced commercially, it can only be found in the backyard.  They’re easy to grow and are bountiful producers.

 

          After La Comtesse de Chambord, the Beurre de Rocquencourt takes its place as the premier wax bean.  Although its forbearers haled from Central America, it was introduced into France from Algeria about 1840, and as one can tell by its name, it melts in the mouth.  The pods are straight, slim, stringless, and crisp as well as being fine-flavored.  In short, they are a chef’s delight, and as with La Comtesse de Chambord they’re rare and unavailable in the grocery stores.  There is little point in growing vegetables that can be found in the supermarket, especially when these rare beans are easy to grow and taste better.

          Finally, there is the haricot vert which is French for green bean.  The interesting thing about the word haricot is that it may come from Aztec ayacotli indicating the origins of the bean.  The French green bean or haricot vert is longer, slimmer, and better tasting than the ordinary American green bean, something like 7 inches long.  Now and then, they can be found in upscale grocery stores, but they’re never as good as home-grown.  My favorite is the Maxibel.

          For an investment of about ten dollars, gardeners can have the world at their doors, horticulturally and culinarily.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.