Rahsaan wrote:My wife and I are pescetarian but I've always cooked chicken for my son. From the time in Germany he definitely picked up a taste for various sausages. And from the US, he picked up a love for burgers, which are also quite popular in Germany. So for his 12 year old self, it's plenty of fun to compare the various burgers in Berlin to the various US burgers he's had.
It's cool that you're giving him the option of choice; worst thing, I'm sure, would be for him to feel weird among his peers. Let him learn. A friend who grew up 7th Day Adventist vegetarian talks about how hard it was to feel different. She leans that direction even now for the health benefit, but considers herself an omnivore.
So about the meal I was planning for yesterday, I need to clear up some confusion. I wasn't actually planning to combine the corn, tomatoes and squash into a single dish. More like corn as a main course with squash and tomatoes as separate side dishes.
As it is, my plans got derailed because Rahsaan mentioned succotash which got me wondering if I could find a place to order fresh lima beans from the east coast. These days almost anything you want can land on your doorstep overnight, but I've looked for several years now and not found a source. So I called my BIL who grew up on St. James Island (near Charleston). That led to us discussing limas (which are getting harder and harder to find--20 years ago a local Safeway offered both baby limas and Fordhooks but the Fordhooks have disappeared and I haven't been able to find baby limas at Haggen, which did used to carry them). Like peas, I always like to have them in my freezer since fresh isn't a possibility.
So my BIL John and I were talking about all things bean: limas, speckled butter beans, black eyed peas and field peas. My brother Chris believes he cooked 'field peas' in South Carolina once but what he describes are what John confirms as being speckled butter beans. A field pea appears to be like a black eyed pea but smaller, and will be both green and brown in color. I've never had them. When I googled butter beans, besides the speckled variety what comes up are what look to me like the big Fordhook limas which, in the canned state or when cooked from a dried lima, end up called butter beans but they aren't actually a different specie of bean.
So that led to us trying to get any of these to the west coast. We found frozen butter beans at a Kroger chain in Seattle, and have a call in to the local Fred Meyer, also a Kroger chain, to see if they can order some up for us.
That also led to them deciding to come over for dinner. And I'd long been promising them a Cowboy steak dinner wherein Chuck Eye steaks are dredged in coffee, sugar and salt and grilled over charcoal until crispy. I prepared an olive-heavy gardineria for snacking on with white wines, then served the steaks, sliced and toppled in a pile over argula seasoned with lemon juice and EVOO, with potatoes in a fresh mixed herb and garlic sauce, and corn cut off the cob and pan fried in butter. (Much as I love to eat corn off the cob, my husband can't eat that, and it's messy so this was best.)
Dale, that corn is hilarious. A condition you might call Growis Interuptis, or something, but funny that one of the three was normal.
