A Non-Gender Specific Green Bean Casserole

My mom's explanation for The Green Bean Casserole is the following:

"I know that it's not that exciting, honey, but men just love it."

So we have GBC at every holiday. And my dad and brother-in-law look forward to it. I'm not going to delve into the gender-specific nature of this comment, but I guess she's cooked it a lot longer than I have, so I'll leave it at that.

Still, it's definitely not something that excites me all that much. Well, besides the French Fried onions on top ... so I went to the Vintage Kitchen for a suitable replacement that wouldn't have anyone grumbling at the table, no matter the gender.

For my vegetarian sister, I'm serving the bacon on the side for individual serving.

Click here for the complete column, and enjoy!

Recipe from the Monticello Cookbook

I make pickles on Friday night -- don't you?

This weekend, I needed to spend a little time in my little kitchen, doing a little project to take my mind off some things.

I chose Dilly Beans.

I had some of the last green beans of the season in my fridge, and it was time to either use them or freeze them. So I decided it was time to face the pickling process again. During any summer the past few years, you'd find some fresh refrigerator pickles in my fridge, sometimes with radishes or a jalapeno thrown in. But the process of processing pickles hadn't gone that smoothly before.

I didn't have one of those jar lifter thingys --

yep, one of these, and I didn't realize how important they were until I had a death grip on a hot jar with my restaurant supply tongs. I didn't have a rack to sit in the bottom of the pot to keep the jars steady, so they started bouncing against each other, which you can imagine isn't a good thing for glass.

But on Friday night, I still didn't have those things, but I knew what I was getting into. I put a clean dish towel in the bottom of my big stock pot and covered it with water. I prepared myself for a two-handed tong grip once the jars were ready. And I picked out pretty jar rings for the holiday.

The result:

Three jars for gifts and one jar for B. already in the fridge. And the fear of the process gone.