From one day to the next, it’s difficult to comprehend how well our various vegetable plantings are doing. For example, we planted two rows of stringless green beans. Roughly, eight plants came to maturity. Now that the season for the beans is nearly over, we have brought in 190 bean pods. Now add to that the 159 Monticello bean pods we have harvested from four plants. The bottom line is, that makes for a lot of green beans.

This was the first year that we had attempted green bean with any serious intent. We were experimenting with technique and had no plan on preserving them. Well, our experiments were successful and we ended up with more beans than expected. That meant we had to come up with some novel ways for preparation.

At this point, I might add that our single cherry tomato plant has been unusually cooperative. Since it’s first tomato on June 22, it has yielded 71 beautiful, tiny orbs of veggie goodness.

Beautiful, lovely, and highly capable Spouse is a master at recipe research. Armed with her knowledge of our resources and capabilities at the soon-to-be famous SFH Test Kitchen, she uncovered a gem of a recipe at Allrecipes.com. This simple, quick-to-prepare (only 20 minutes) recipe called Green Beans with Cherry Tomatoes not only met our two primary ingredients criteria (green beans and cherry tomatoes), it also brought in two other important essentials for living a happy life – garlic & butter. (Have I ever told you how much we love garlic and butter?)

We only made one minor adjustment to the recipe – we used minced garlic instead of garlic salt. The end product was highlighted by the use of our own fresh basil.

So, dear and gentle readers, if you find this gardening season that you have an abundance of green beans and cherry tomatoes, try out this recipe.