Going green!

Yes! This is my kind of green! Picking, which yielded more than five gallons of green beans fresh out of the garden. And this is only the first picking!

Lovely green beans! Snapping them is the most fun part. Snapping the stems off the end and then breaking them into two or three pieces. They were very clean beans as well... very few bad spots or parts that had been nibbled on by insects... Gorgeous!

After they were washed they were packed and salted for canning. The only shame about canning is that they lose that bright color, but omgoodness! I love freshly canned green beans!! All seven quarts sealed nicely and there was probably another two or three quarts left over that mom cooked with new potatoes and ham. Delicious!!

Meanwhile... the jalapeños are exploding!

Just look at that beast! And once the peppers start coming on, the poppers start piling up.

My assembly line is set up. The recipe isn't anything with concrete measurements. I do them in small batches at the time. I start with an 8 oz thing of cream cheese and add shredded cheese and bacon bits (real bacon bacon bits) until the mixture looks right. If I use it all with what I have, great, or I keep what's left until I get more. But I try not to do too many at once because it's a long process. After I halve and core them, I stuff them with the mixture, dip in milk and roll in flour. It has to dry before I can dip again in milk and roll in Italian bread crumbs. I do that twice more with the bread crumbs, drying in between each dip-n-roll. The idea is for the breading to be so thick that you can't tell which side is the filling. It's time consuming but worth it. Then I freeze them in the proportions I use and drop them in a 350 degree deep fryer for 3 minutes when I want to eat them. Yummy!!!

And that's my idea of going green in the summer!