Still Pickin'

There's only a few things still rockin' and rollin' in the garden as we're halfway through August.  It's hot and it's dry and most things are done.  We're waiting to plant or transplant all the fall items in the garden, but I've learned my lesson on that.  If you transplant now, there are lots of bugs and worms that consider your early planting a benevolent offering.  They quickly devour every seedling you transplant.  I'll wait them out for a while more.

One thing that's producing is our Blackeye Butterbeans.  This has become a favorite of mine.  It trellises nicely on the cattle panel and withstands the heat and drought very well.  Just yesterday I noticed that we had quite a few pods that were ready, so I got a basket and went out to pick Blackeye butterbeans.  They are like a blackeyed pea, but are butterbeans.

Here's what the pods look like.  They have three or four butterbeans in each one.  You can also pick them when they're green.  If you wait too long, the dried pods crack open and the butterbeans spill on the ground.  We can't have any of that foolishness.

I didn't take long to fill a basket with freshly harvested butterbeans.  I put the sprinkler on to water the sweet potatoes and peppers.  They are really suffering in the summer heat and dry spell.

It is a satisfying thing to shell peas.  It doesn't matter which kind.  You sit with the basket of butterbeans to be shelled, a bowl to put the butterbeans, and another to hold the pods.  At the end, you have a nice bowl of butterbeans that are ready to soak.  You can put a pot of rice on and then cook the butterbeans with some onions, peppers, and tasso.  A cast iron skillet with homemade cornbread slathered with butter really puts it over the top.

We cook most of what we pick and then save some of the biggest and prettiest for seed for next year.  

I like to pick 'em and I love to eat 'em!

It Ain't Worth Fighting About

Everyone has heard of black-eyed peas.  Black-eyed peas are an old favorite.  I've eaten them and enjoyed them since I was very young.  A couple of winters ago when it was too cold and the weather was too wet to even think about gardening, well, you do what gardeners do in the winter.  You think about the spring garden.  AND you peruse seed catalogs, looking for that new crop that you'd like to try.  That's when I turned the page and saw it.

Everyone likes black-eyed peas.  And everyone likes butter beans.  What if you combined the two?  Why, it would be like mixing chocolate and peanut butter and inventing the peanut butter cup.  There within the pages of the Baker Creek  Heirloom Seed Company catalog was "Black Eyed Butter Beans."  It is an heirloom crop out of Alabama, and I just had to order some.  We tried a small plot of them last year and were pleased.  I saved a bunch of the seeds and planted more this year.  They are enjoying the hot weather and frequent rain showers and are producing prolifically.

Every other day I pick a basketful and sit on the back patio and shell the blackeyed butter beans.  Forget about sitting in front of the TV or scrolling through social media.  I pulled up "Just My Imagination" by the Temptations and began shelling peas.  Now, that's entertainment!  I know some would roll their eyes at that, but hey, everyone has their preferences, right?  More on that in a minute.

Black-eyed butterbeans are just what they sound like.  It's as if someone took a black-eyed pea and squashed them all flat.

Tricia cooked them up in a pot and made a pan of homemade cornbread.  This right here is some good southern cooking.  Just when they were done, I pulled out four or five cups and used the immersion blender to blend up the black-eyed butterbeans into a 'gravy' of sorts and then ladled it over some hot white rice and put some buttered cornbread on the side.  Let's say grace and EAT!

A little bowl of heaven

The photo above is just the way I like it.  I was about to blend up the rest of the pot when Tricia put a halt to that idea.  You see, Tricia likes to eat them "unprocessed" like you see in the pot below.

I don't think they are bad eaten like that.  I would just rather them mashed up.  I think they stick to your ribs better my way.  The fancy way to do it is with an immersion blender, but cooked right, you can just mash them up with a spoon on the side of the pot with the same outcome.  However, Tricia insisted that I leave her butterbeans whole and had me remove mine and mash them up in a separate container.  She said something to the effect of "Those aren't butterbeans anymore.  They're mashed up bean paste."

Reminds me of Jack Sprat could eat no fat, His wife could eat no lean.  So in betwixt the both of them they licked the platter clean."  And we did.  We finished off the black eyed butter beans in short order.  She had it her way, and I had them mine.  It's all good, and it ain't worth fighting about...