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French beans

 I know a few people who think French beans are tasty. But then, if your mom or your mom in law or whoever the lady of the household is, insists on cooking it with onions and tomatoes or potatoes or other vegetables like carrots and lots of spices, you can hardly blame people for having negative feelings towards some of the most beautiful green vegetables. Like green beans. I guess Spring must be here for I am psychologically starting my love affair with green vegetables. 

This morning, as Avantika enjoyed one of her favorite breakfast items, I boiled a Potato and wondered about the color change in the water. Avantika's favorite breakfast item is a store brought crossaint that is technically not a crossaint but a piece of yeasted bread shaped like a crossaint and though it has the flavor of some fat that imitates butter, it lacks the richness of butter - it is fine, it's convenient and probably tasty too, probably just perfect for the lifestyle and environment she lives in. But I had no hunger for anything this morning. My body has been on a long fast, yet I'm not hungry. The only smell my nose detected as palatable in the last 24 hours was the smell of French beans cooking. I wondered now about eating French beans for breakfast. So, I picked out a few from the fridge, washed them and dropped them in the starchy water where the potato boiled.

After a while, as they seemed soft but still floating, I removed them with tongs and dropped them in a pan where something was cooked in ghee so it was coated with hardly any ghee. I sprinkled a pinch of salt and 2 drops of lemon. And this was my breakfast. 

Now, while I sit with a full stomach, I wonder why I liked it so much. French beans? They are usually tasteless and astringent with a mild sweetness, but I think the starchy water they were cooked in had something to do with the sweetness.. Or maybe, there is some natural sweetness in them that comes alive when boiled. It was mildly sweet, yet the sweetness if that is what the nice taste was, was overpowering the salty taste of a pinch of salt and tangy taste of the two drops of lemon juice in it. I still wonder what it is that made this otherwise infamous vegetable so satisfying today. 

It's probably the season. Beginning of Spring, when mornings are misty and foggy, the astringent beans feel satisfying.  They are also said to help in building of all seven dhatus (body tissue). And they pacify Vata, Pitta and Kapha. 



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