Food Storage Friday: Stir-fried Green Beans with Rice

Sometime in the last month we got green beans in our Bountiful Basket. My husband has a tendency to turn his nose up at green beans and my kids won't try them either. One day I mentioned that we should eat them and my husband said "I can't imagine that there is anything you can do to green beans to make them delicious." I took this as a challenge. Heather has a tendency to be fairly irritated when someone tells her that she can't do something. When I was in college my department counselor laughed at me for a good 15 minutes when I told her I was thinking about graduating with University Honors. I did it and in less than four years too, so there.  So I turned to How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food  for ideas. I found a recipe for Twice-Fried Green Beans, that sounded like it had potential, except it involved deep-frying, which I am pretty aversive to. So I took all of the ingredients, stir-fried them and served them over rice. My husband loved it and admitted that green beans can taste good as long as they don't come from a can. He liked it so much that I caught him multiple times sticking his finger in the empty pan to scrape out the remains of the sauce. Mission accomplished.

Stir-fried Green Beans with Rice
Food Storage Ingredients:
rice, prepared per package directions
4 Tablespoons of oil
1/2 cup cashews
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sugar
dash of salt

Fresh Ingredients:
1 1/2 lbs fresh green beans
1 Tablespoon chopped garlic
1/2 cup scallions, chopped*

1. Stir-fry green beans in oil for ten minutes on medium heat. 2. Add cashews and cook until they just start to brown. 3. Add garlic, scallions, and red pepper flakes. Cook until onions turn clear. 4.  Add soy sauce and salt. 5. Sprinkle sugar evenly over vegetables. Saute until evenly coated with sauce. (It will be thick and sticky.) Serve over rice.

*The original recipe called for scallions, but I used the small red onions that I had just harvested from my garden with very satisfactory results.