catjac1975
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You have the best family memories!
marshallsmyth said:Decades ago when I was a little kid I heard about freezing beans. Mom said ya had to boil them first, then bag them and stick them in the freezer. They were pencil pod wax, royalty purple pod, and probably bush blue lake. Wellp, I did just that, using a chair to stand at the stove. Mom walking around in the kitchen and area, pretending not to be watching or supervising, course she was. I did not do the dry the beans or even cool them down part, because I did not know about that part of the job.
Next day the freezer had a solid mass of frozen icy beans. Dad chipped a few bags out and mom cooked them. They were good, but kind of rubbery.
So, main thing abouyt freezing beans I learned was, yep, gotsta get them kind of dry first after boiling them.
The idea is to make them look like what the inside of a store bought bag of feozen beans looks like.
That's the main part of freezing.
Tendergreen is a really great variety!
As for the finer points of freezing, welll...as you can see, I was raised to learn from my mistakes or to read the instructions if all else fails, and as far as cooking or sewing goes, that was for my sisters, not for me. Kind of old fashioned.
Then again, there is another alternative to freezing or pickling that nobody mentioned.
Leather Britches the beans. They are picked a bit later, and are usually the cutshort varieties, or else the real big kinds like Kentucky Wonder White seeded. McCaslan or Missouri Wonder, or a lot of the cornfield varieties not available in most catalogs work for this.
For Leather Britches, Pick them half way between "tender like ya normally pick them" and "shelly bean" stage. (Don't worry. If you have the right variety this is the best stage).
Boil them almost to your normal boiling time. Make sure you add plenty of "vitamin salt". Salt's good for ya. Lol. These are gonna be dried. They need salting. You can add flavorings to the boiling if ya want. Garlic, Pepper, celery salt, what's your favorite...
Remove the beans from the water. Oh.
Forgot to say! Before the whole thing, bring the kids and the family in for "stringing the beans time". Some may not know...ask grandma or grampa, maybe they know, but stringing the beans time used to be a time for family togetherness. pinch the ends off, and pull down the bean. Depending on the variety, ya get some stringy fiber to remove because they are picked later than your "new fangled" bean picking varieties. Blue lake and tendergreen won't give ya much for strings to remove, so they are not suited for leather britches.
After boiling lightly, or a lot, depending on what your gramma says, take the beans out and put them on a freshly cleaned blanket to dry.
Yep.
When they are just right dried, ya get an "extra large eyed" sewing needle and fanagle a string through the eye. tie a large knot on the back end of the string. Maybe add an old button if auntie eleanor has one. Begin "stringing" the beans onto the string. (get it. string beans). The beans are not quite stiff dried when ya do this. You can get fancy adding garlics or red peppers to the string. I hear tell some added dried fish. not me. You can set up your strings of beans in the back or front porch, dining room, kitchen, but somewhere you can keep an eye on them.
Modern folks don't do these things.
DH just brought in the 1st handful of beans. ( we are usually sick of them by now!) More to come. 
