Green beans (a.k.a. snap beans or string beans) are a familiar vegetable, and reasonably low-carb and nutritious. I find it hard to get excited about them, though. Like most people in the American mid-lands, I've been eating green beans my whole life. As a kid, I ate a lot of canned veggies -- including corn, spinach, peas, lima beans, and, yes, green beans. Today, the only canned vegetable I eat at home is spinach. However, I often encounter canned green beans at restaurants. I go ahead and … [Read more...]
Italian Green Bean Salad
For years, Anita has been putting together a summer salad with green beans, tomatoes and red onion. It's an old family recipe. She calls it "Italian Green Bean Salad" in honor of her father, who's an old Italian. It's a delicious, nutritious summer treat, and reasonably low-carb. This summer, with a bumper crop of beans, cucumbers, hot peppers and tomatoes growing in our backyard garden, we were looking forward to making salads with the freshest, most organic of ingredients. Then blossom-end … [Read more...]
Cooking top sirloin on the grill
Summer is a great time to be low-carbing. Nothing says low-carb like a big hunk of red meat on an open grill. That's what we ate for dinner last night, and here's how I prepared it. 1. Get yourself a good fire going. The one pictured here was started 15 minutes before; it wouldn't hurt to wait another ten minutes, but I rarely have that much patience. 2. Plunk down a couple juicy steaks. This is top sirloin, about a pound and a half, nicely marbled. The cow it came from wasn't … [Read more...]