I’ve been a fan of the classic three bean salad since I was a kid. The taste brings me back to childhood picnics and lunch at my aunt’s house on their deck or just in the back yard. I didn’t set out to make it, but I discovered the ingredients in my house quite by accident.

Yesterday morning we descended upon amazing Falls Church Farmer’s Market and stormed the produce sellers. We had limited time, as we were soon off to a birthday party. I was certain the green beans and shelled green peas I bought last week at Giant were bad. So I picked up more green beans and what I thought were peas. Actually, what I bought were green black eyed peas (so technically the guy didn’t lie to me).

I was surprised to discover the Giant produce had survived in the chill chest for a whole week. And this launched the conundrum, “What the heck am I going to do with three kinds of beans?”

3…

beans…

…flashback to childhood…

3 Alternative Bean Salad was born in that moment and the ladies at tonight’s 4th of July dinner gave it such rave reviews that I’m not even going to wait and tinker before publishing the recipe.

Fresh green beans

Fresh sweet green peas

Fresh (green?) black eyed peas (**see note at bottom**)

1/2 cup rice wine vinegar

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil (the good stuff)

1/4 cup sugar

Salt & pepper to taste (I used about 1 tsp kosher salt and a few grinds of while and green peppercorns. My battery operated black pepper grinder was offline for battery replacement and the baby was sleeping. I can never replace the batteries in the thing without making a racket and cursing a whole lot, so I opted for the manual grinders.)

Dijon mustard (I used about 1.5 tsp of the good stuff)

Hot sauce to taste (I used about 6 shakes of a Goya habanero blend)

Fresh Cilantro

Lime Juice (I used bottle, but fresh is always best)

Prep:

Take each of the beans and do the following to them separately:

1. Prepare an ice water bath and find a strainer that will fit in it.
2. Clean them in a strainer under running water
3. For the green beans, remove the unwanted head and tail bits. Leave them as long as you can.
4. Steam them so they’re cooked al dente. For me, this is about 10 minutes in my electric steamer.
5. When the steaming is done immediately put them back in a strainer and put them in the ice water bath you prepared beforehand.
6. Strain and dry the beans then refrigerate.

When all of your beans are ready, select about 1 cup of each. Chop the green beans into 1/2″ to 1″ pieces. Put all the beans into your desired storage container. I used a 4 cup oval tupperware unit I’ve had for over a decade.

Make the juice:

Put the vinegar in a mixing bowl. Slowly add the olive oil while whisking. When done keep whisking until well mixed. (If the baby hadn’t been asleep I’d have used the stick blender with the food processor attachment. But she was, so I whisked by hand. Oy! What a pain) Add the rest of the ingredients except the cilantro and whisk in until throughly mixed.

Pour the juice over the beans. Cover. (Hopefully you’re using an air tight container otherwise shaking and mixing is going to get messy, in which case you want a rain coat and a trip outdoors.)

Chop the cilantro fine and add to the bean mix and juice.

Shake the beans in the juice for 30 to 61 seconds. Put in the fridge. Check back in an hour and do shake again.

About an hour later, serve to discerning guests (or your family).

————–

**** Note: I’ve never seen fresh black eyed peas before. Since the dried variety are always white, I expected fresh ones to be white as well. Mine weren’t, they were green. It is quite possible these are mutant zombie ninja green black eyed peas in which case I’m probably in big trouble. However, it is equally possible that they are some known and inoffensive type of black eyed pea I’ve never heard of before. Maybe one of you nice people will comment on the color of fresh black eyed peas and clue me in. It’s not like I’m connected to the world’s largest and most up to date information source ever in the history of mankind. So I need your help.

We’re in the middle of golden squash and zucchini season. We’re also at the tail end of strawberry season. One more week, maybe two, and the fresh local strawberries will be gone gone gone.

This morning, after breakfast and some errands, we went to the Vienna farmer’s market and stocked up on the freshest produce. I considered the options for the veggies, and Martha mentioned our little scientist loves soup. So what could be better than squash zucchini soup? Two soups, that’s what. After a few minutes searching through the Interwebs, I added some fresh herbs and about a pound of sweet italian lamb sausage to the take home. After many hard hours of work, I present the recipes (as best as I can recall) for the mad science soups of the day: Cold Strawberry Soup and Squash Zucchini Soup.

Cold Strawberry Soup

I built this one large. I picked up 2 quarts of fresh strawberries and tried to add as little as possible to the taste. I based this on cooks.com recipe for my starting point. I opted for a lot more citrus and a lot less sugar. Most of the recipes I saw included some dairy, and that’s a no go for me. So I substituted coconut milk from the package. This is approximately what I used:

2 qt. fresh in season strawberries

Juice and zest of one orange, one lemon, one lime

1 cup sugar

1 package instant coconut milk

Enough water to cover the strawberries in the pot. I used at least 4 cups.

Making the soup was simplicity itself. Even Igor could do it.

Clean, dry, and remove the leaves and stems from the strawberries. Place them in a large pot on the stove. Add sugar. Zest the citrus and cut in half. Juice the citrus. Put the zest in the pot. Strain the pulp and seeds before putting the juice into the pot. Add enough water to cover. Add instant coconut milk powder.

Bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Lower heat to lowest setting and allow to cool. Get out your stick blender and blend until smooth. Make sure not to sent the mixture flying, as you could get burned.

Allow the mixture to thicken to where you would like it to be. I reduced the water by about 1/3 from the end of cooking before I let the soup cool. Once cool, chill. Then serve as you please.

Squash Zucchini Soup

I had a lot of squash and zucchini. You will probably start with less. This one is simple. Igor could do it even when his brain is in the wash.

You’ll need:

a mess of squash and zucchini.

Chicken broth or Veggie Broth, low salt or salt free

About 3/4 lb. of sweet italian lamb (or pork) sausage. This is optional for the VEG among us.

Salt & Pepper

Fresh Parsley, Basil, & Cilantro (I used 1/2 a bunch of basil and a whole bunch of parsley & cilantro)

Peel the squash and zucchini. Cut into rounds and place in your stock pot. Add enough broth to cover. Add a little salt to start. You can add more later.

Put the sausages under your heat of choice and cook thoroughly. Let cool and cut into 1/2″ slices. Save grease to add to soup if desired. The lamb sausage didn’t have much, so I added it for flavor.

Cover. Simmer veggies for about 20 minutes making sure to stir every 5 minutes or so.

Wash the herbs and make sure the stalks are tender before putting the stocks, along with the leaves, into the pot. Let simmer for another 5 minutes to soften the herbs. Hit the whole thing with your immersion (stick) blender. Blend it smooth. Taste. Add salt & pepper as needed.

Make sure not to over salt. Add meat. Lower temperature and allow soup to reduce by 1/4 to 1/3.

Serve and enjoy hot.

Anyone who has a baby around knows that they love bananas. You also know babies can’t finish all the bananas you buy before they go brown, then spotted, and finally black. I think this child based excess of old bananas was the original source for the plethora of banana bread recipes. Regardless, my solution to stem the brown & black banana tide has been to make banana bread.
My original recipe for this comes from Bon Appetit Magazine. It’s called their Best Ever Banana Bread and what makes it best ever is copious amounts of fat and sugar. In our quest for a healthier recipe, I sought out one with much lower fat and sugar. After two false starts I settled on this recipe from Recipe Zaar.

The addition of the apple sauce adds a nice flavor and when I stumbled across granny smith apple sauce snack cups in the store, I decided to give that a try. The granny smith made a huge difference. It really adds an extra dimension to the banana bread, giving it just a little bit of sour tart taste. So, of course, I decided to punch that up with even more.

I ran into a problem when I decided to add two entire snack cups to the mix. This added a lot more fruit material and liquid. I’ve been compensating with an extra 1/2 cup of flour and a pinch more baking soda and baking powder. So far that seems to have corrected and made a better cake, but I think I still need to add more of them to make it the best yet.

I changed my mind on the GSAS (granny smith applesauce). I ran into problems with such a huge mixture. Now I only use extra GSAS to make up for a deficit in the available number of bananas.

I also changed the cooking method to cream the sugar and butter first. This made a fantastic difference in texture but only if the butter is at room temperature. Room temperature butter is very important. The BB is much lighter and fluffier now. I also triple the vanilla. I think everything needs much more vanilla than is in the recipe. I kept adding more and more vanilla until all I could taste was vanilla. This was too much. 1 Tablespoon of vanilla is about the maximum, but you may want less depending on your taste.

Another option, which I haven’t tried, would be to hold back one or two of the bananas, but I think that might change the taste too much. Given the way we go through bananas, I’m baking about one BB a week. So it won’t be long before I decide to try another variation.

If anyone knows of a source of granny smith apple sauce that doesn’t come in snack cups, please let me know by leaving a comment.

In the mean time, here’s the recipe as it stands:

• 4 very ripe bananas
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon + a pinch baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon + a pinch baking powder
• 1 egg
• 2 1 Motts Granny Smith applesauce snack cups

1. Cream softened butter and sugar together in a stand mixer for 5 minutes on medium.
2. Add bananas into the bowl and mash for another 5 minutes on medium or until pulverized.
3. Add all other wet ingredients and mix well.
4. Add sugar, baking soda, baking powder and mix well.
5. Add in flour in 1/2 cup batches until incorporated.
6. Mix until smooth, stopping once or twice to scrape the sides. Do not overmix (You don’t want to make too much gluten which will make your banana bread tough as nails).
7. Pour into a large greased loaf pan (or you can split it in half and use two smaller loaf pans).
8. Pour into two greased 8 inch loaf pans.
9. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 to 60 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean.

The wine was a sweet white from Fiore winery in Maryland. We picked it up at our friends Mike and Nikki’s wedding back last year.

I deviated heavily from the FoodTV recipe and the results were spectacular. Here’s my version of the recipe:

• 4 firm Bartlett pears
• 1 bottle, less 1 wine glass full, Fiore Malvasia Bianca Dolce
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup of sugar
• 6 peppercorns
• 1 vanilla bean

Unlike all other Poached Pear recipes I’ve seen, I broke down the pears into 1/8 sections. First I peeled and quartered them and removed the core and seeds. Then I cut them across the width to make them all about the same sized chunks.  I’ve always had a problem with the standard recipe because the insides tend to be raw while the outside is falling apart.

I put the pears in a small sauce pan so I could keep the height of the liquid as high as possible. I emptied the bottle of wine in the pan and turned the heat to one notch over medium. I dumped in the remainder of sugar from the coffee service, which is why I don’t know exactly how much went in the pot. To this I added 6 whole black peppercorns and a vanilla bean.

I split the vanilla bean in half and scraped out the insides. I learned to do that from Alton Brown. I don’t work with whole vanilla beans, and while they’re expensive, it made the dish truly awesome. I put the casing and the insides of the bean in the pan and covered until it started to simmer. Then I took the cover off and let it cook just over a simmer. I guess you’d call it a low boil.

After 10 minutes I checked the pears and they weren’t tender enough. I checked them again 5 minutes later and they seemed all right. In hind sight, I would have given them another 5 minutes because some of the pieces weren’t completely tender. This gives me an estimate of 20 minutes.

Once done I removed the pears with a slotted spoon and put them in a tupperware container which I sealed and set aside. I then strained the liquid to remove the vanilla bean and peppercorns and put it back on the heat. I reduced the sauce to a syrup.

As it turned out, the pears had a expressed a lot of liquid while cooling the the tupperware. When I mixed the syrup back in with the pears it got soupy again. So I poured off all the liquid and reduced it again until I was returning a nice thick syrup back to my cooled pears. You might want to wait for the pears to cool and pour their liquid back into the sauce pan before doing the reduction.

We at these as is, with syrup, and over vanilla ice cream and angel food cake. We tried them hot and cool and both were awesome. The potency of the syrup seemed to fade over the course of a week, so I wouldn’t keep them around for more than 3 days. I just can’t eat that much fruit in one sitting.

This recipe is awesome. Don’t skimp on the vanilla bean. It really makes the whole thing worth while.

I plan on trying this again, but I’ll probably double the recipe. It’s a lot of work for just 4 pears and 8 pears worth would be better.

I have a ton of family only and friend only pictures on my Flickr feed. I chose to use the 6th picture on the 6th page that a non-friend/family person would see. If you go to the 6th photo on the 6th page and don’t see this picture, then you’re a friend or family member on Flickr, so you see pictures of mine that most people don’t see.

Balticon has been an anchor in my life almost immediately from the time I moved to the D.C. area. I has been my favorite con for over 15 years and about a decade ago I started volunteering my time to help run the it. I started out helping CZ run computer gaming, and eventually took over the reigns as his personal life got more complex. When my interest in computer gaming waned I started the podcasting track and the Balticon Podcast.

This turns out to be one of the best things I’ve ever done. The podcasting track morphed into the new media track and now includes blogs, podcasts, and web comics. I’ve met and become friends with a huge creative community which enriches my life on a daily basis. I can’t remember a time when I’ve had so many friends all over the world with whom I’ve been able to create new and better things.

The first year we had the podcasting track at Balticon, someone wanted to have blue crabs. I think it might be Mur Lafferty who made the initial suggestion. Since then a blue crab feast has become a regular event for the podcasters at Balticon.

For Balticon 42, Earl Newton is the one who really made it happen. He got everyone together, placed the order, wrangled the crabs, and found us a place to eat. The large paper bag is full of steamed spiced Maryland goodness.

Where do you ear blue crab? First you go to Maryland because they make the best. Ideally, blue crabs are eaten outside and with beer. A good crowd of friends always makes the meal that much sweeter.

How do you eat a blue crab? Then you get some plain brown paper for a table cloth and a big wooden mallet. You open up the body of the crab like a pop top soda can and get the mustard and good body meat. Then you take the mallet and smash the claws to get the delicious claw meat. If you’re a pro, you can get a little meat from the legs. I am not, so I skip them.

Don’t bother washing up until you’ve had your fill. Maryland blue crabs, eaten this way, are messy. Downright delectable, but very very messy.

Our yearly crab feast is always one of the high points for me. I expend so much energy getting the track coordinated and getting recordings for the Balticon Podcast, that it really matters to me that I get to sit down with my friends and peers and just enjoy the company and the meal.

Thanks to Aud for sending it in.

Buy Scott’s new book, Infected, on April first and show the world what Podcasting can do!

Scott Sigler: grumble-grumble … time to make the donuts. I need a day off.

Maegan Breakall: @scottsigler I’ll take a glazed, this time no blood splatters on it tho, k?

Scott Sigler: @VividMuse: They all have blood splatters. I’m switching to writing romance.

Paul Fischer: @scottsigler I like raised donuts, not cake ones. Cruller Rawk!

Christiana Ellis: @pfischer I like crullers when they are good. But when they get even a LITTLE bit stale or soggy, instant yuck.

Paul Fischer: @scottsigler Gore filled blood splattered eye flavored donuts

Maegan Breakall: @pfischer: LOL!!!! i love it!

Christiana Ellis: I hate them soggy, but I’ll put up with them a little stale. Fresh is best.

Scott Sigler: @pfischer: funny, that’s just the kind of batch of donuts I’m working on right now. Flavors: Russian, Italian, Nocturnal.

Scott Sigler: @pfischer: that is one of the coolest pics ever.

Bacon therapy and furuncular myiasis

What better place to keep your cash stash than wrapped in pork belly!

Thanks to Viv for the link.

I’ve also created a bacon category for the blog so I can post bacon specific news.