Green Beans

They became the soft, mushy backbone to our Sunday dinners, a staple that even as an adult I crave and come back to again and again for their nourishment. As a child, I ate these green beans by the bucketfuls. Sunday after Sunday would roll around, the thick scent of fat back melting into the gargantuan pot of stewing green beans. I never let her down, at least not with this vegetable: my mom could proudly proclaim that her kids ate their vegetables.

The process of cooking down these beans started usually Saturday afternoon, would periodically stop overnight (beans stored in the fridge because Mom swears they’re better if you do the fridge step), and then resume cooking until lunch the next day. We weren’t much for gardening (at least not back then; two working parents, small kids, a sometimes consuming church life), so it usually meant opening up one of the giant cans of green beans bought at the local Food Lion on our weekly shopping trips.

Crank open the can. Dump the beans in. Turn the burner on almost the highest setting. Let ‘em cook hard. But watch, make sure all the liquid doesn’t burn off. Add some fatback if you have it. Let the cycle of cooking hard and cooking down run continuously, again and again. Add an undetermined amount of salt. Oh, and water; add the water (I always forget this step) when the liquid is getting low. Always come back to the pot to make sure those beans aren’t burning. But you must cook them hard enough to bring out that perfect, slightly sweet, definitely salty flavor.

I don’t know how long she cooked those beans most Sundays but I was always in awe of the process. Always in awe that she didn’t forget about the beans. Didn’t burn the beans (like I did the first time I tried). She coaxed the most delicious taste straight out of those beans, and it tasted like exactly like Sunday dinner should. So good that I’ve known people to drink the left-over juice straight from the bottom of the green bean pot.

Even when arguments erupted during the week, I always knew Sunday dinner was coming. Even when my sister refused for the 768^th time to play with me, I knew Sunday dinner was coming. Even when we uprooted our life and moved to a new town in middle school. Even when boys broke my heart. Even after my nuclear family dissolved, Sunday dinners still came. Even when life rose and fell with its terrifying unpredictability, those green beans filled my plate again and again. And I savored the sweetness and the saltiness and knew instinctively, even then, that life mostly tastes just like those beans.