Green Beans

I had my first green beans of the season the other day. They were sweet, tender and smelled of ham.They had spent the better part of an afternoon entwined with a hambone as the beans and the bone slowly boiled on top of the stove.That is my favorite style of string beans, ones that have cooked all afternoon. They are the perfect dish for those summer days when all bodies, not just those of the beans, go limp from the heat. They also are terrific at night when plucked cold from a plate of leftovers during a raid on the refrigerator.

It's true. The Chicken 'n' Waffles food truck has pulled into town. The man behind the truck is Sterling Godfrey, who just recently moved his mobile operation from the D.C. suburbs to the streets of Baltimore. The specialty of the truck is the chicken-and-waffle combo ($9.50), and waffles and chicken all by themselves. You can get waffle plain ($6) or topped with strawberry or blueberry ($7.75). Orders of chicken wings begin at $2.60 for two and end at $10.40 for 10. Also on the menu: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, minced pork barbecue, and half-smokes, as wells as fish sandwiches (tilapia or whiting)

How do I keep green beans bright green? They always turn an olive color on me. The key to cooking green beans - really, to cooking most green vegetables - is to cook them in three stages: blanch them, shock them, saute them. This is my preferred method for dealing with green beans, broccoli, asparagus and sugar snap peas. First, bring a large pot of water to boil. The more water you use, the less it will cool down when you add the vegetables, and the quicker it will come back to a boil.

Each week a nutritionist from the University of Maryland Medical Center provides a guest post to The Baltimore Sun's health blog Picture of Health (baltimoresun.com/pictureofhealth), which is reprinted here. This week, Faith Hicks weighs in on family meals. How is it that some kids will eat whatever is put in front of them, while others live on hot dogs and chicken nuggets and have a phobia for vegetables, especially anything green? Many adults should be eating more fruits and vegetables themselves and would like to raise their kids to have healthful eating habits right from the start.

When fresh green beans arrive on the scene, I think of the snapping sessions of my youth, the time spent in the kitchen pinching off the ends of the beans and snapping them in half. As a kid, bean snapping was among my first kitchen jobs. The task was simple; it did not require using a sharp instrument. My mom figured I was up to this challenge. But the task also involved making conversation. A kid who was snapping beans at the kitchen table was trapped in an adult world for a while. Inevitably my mom, my grandmother or a visiting aunt would use the occasion to ask probing questions.

Q: When I go to France, I find tiny slender green beans. This seems to be a different kind of green bean than the ones I find in my neighborhood grocery store. Can the French kind be found here?A: Those tiny green beans you find in France are most likely a bean that is referred to in the U.S. as "haricot vert" (which in French means "green bean"). These delicate, slender beans can be found seasonally in stores that carry specialty produce, but they're usually more expensive than the common green bean because they are imported.

For more than half a century, my family has been curing our canker sores quickly and easily. Just this week, I bit my lip during sleep, and the spot kept growing. When the sore was 2/3-inch by 1/4 -inch, I decided to cure it. By the next day it had shrunk to a short, thin slit, and soon no sign remained. The cure is to eat a can of green beans. We used to have Gerber's strained green beans, but we can no longer find this product. Whatever the active ingredient is, it works really well and tastes a lot better than sauerkraut juice.

Refreshing and satisfying, this quick dish makes an easy transition from summer into fall - when our great oysters are back in season, yet we're still dealing with the lingering heat. Buying fresh oysters is best. You may ask your fishmonger to shuck the oysters and save the shells for you. (They are great to save and have on hand if you use jarred oysters and need shells for presentation).Serve some hearty bread with the entree salad or bread sticks or crunchy lavosh crackers.For dessert, just indulge in some chocolate ice cream or some frozen yogurt sprinkled with crushed peanut crunch candy bars.

It's become routine for me to respond to casual dinner invitations from good friends by offering to bring a homemade dish to the meal. I am not the only one. Lately I've noticed that more and more guests seem to arrive at informal gatherings with a contribution. It seems to be a trend -- one with a logical explanation. Most of our friends lead hectic lives trying to balance demanding jobs, children's schedules and community commitments with entertaining. Finding time to plan and cook an entire meal can seem like a Herculean task, but when others volunteer to bring part of the night's fare -- a salad, a side dish or a dessert, for example -- then the stress factor is reduced and playing host for a supper or dinner seems much more manageable.

Giving a dinner party immediately after the holidays can be daunting. One reason is that most people, after having cooked a traditional Christmas or New Year's feast, have little energy or creative resources left to draw upon. Then, of course, there's the calorie-counting problem. Guilt-ridden after indulging in rich foods during the season of celebrations, everyone I know swears that they are on a diet the minute the calendar changes to Jan. 2. This year I am faced with such post-holiday entertaining.

Now that Picture of Health has a new blog home, we're restarting our healthy recipe feature. We will gather healthy recipes from magazines, cookbooks and websites and share them with you. We'd also like to hear from you with your recipe ideas. You can e-mail them to andrea.walker@baltsun.com or meredith.cohn@baltsun.com . This week's recipes is for Curry Vegetables and comes from Chef Meg Galvin at SparkRecipes.com , a free website associated with SparkPeople.com, a free Internet community that helps you track meals.

Russell Brown, executive chef at O'Learys Seafood Restaurant in Annapolis, was in Today's Kitchen on Nov. 18 with Al Roker and Natalie Morales. The funniest thing happened. See, Brown is demonstrating how to make swordfish steak au poivre, and Morales notices that among the ingredients on the counter was white wine. So, Morales asks Brown about it, and then Al Roker makes it seem like Morales was interested because she wanted to DRINK the wine!!!!! You can watch this classic TV moment here . The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog is running Thanksgiving Tips from the Stars -- here's a recipe for Brussels sprouts with pancetta from Chazz Palminteri, which you can try for yourself at Chazz: A Bronx Original in Baltmore's beautiful Harbor East.

Herea are options for Thanksgivinging for inexperienced or otherwise preoccupied hosts and guests assigned to bring side dishes. It almost goes without saying that money is a factor. These options aren't for everybody. Industry veterans Classic Catering People  just launched a new website on Nov. 12, is offering an a la carte menu  as well as two complete dinner packages , each of which serves 10 people --  the Traditional Thanksgiving Feast is $145, and the Harvest Table, inspired by local and organic ingredients, is $190.

The United Methodist Women of First United Methodist Church of Laurel will hold their annual ham luncheon Thursday, Nov. 10 from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. in the church Fellowship Hall, 424 Main St. Menu includes ham, green beans, homemade potato salad, apple sauce, rolls, desserts, coffee and tea. Tickets are $7. To purchase tickets in advance, call Lois Hamilton, 301-498-9736 or the church office, 301-725-3093. Tickets will also be sold at the door, and carryout will be available.

Name: Dakota Owner: John and Michele Clifton How they met: We found her online from a breeder in Indiana. We were able to watch her interact with her Mom and littermates via a webcam. We were specifically looking for a dog to train in agility and both her parents were agility dogs. She was running through tunnels at 8 weeks old. When she was 11 weeks, we traveled to a park in Ohio where the breeder met us half way. She came home with us that day and never looked back! Age: 6 Home: Timonium Breed: American Eskimo Dog aka Eskie Best Trick: Dancing on her back legs.

Not being terribly "continental," we Americans tend to hit the supermarket once a week, rather than shopping for fresh stuff for dinner every day. Hence, the pantry. In your arsenal of fall-back foods to use for dinner when you can't get to the supermarket, there are undoubtedly a few cans of things designed to engender a quick family supper. Soups, undoubtedly. And tuna, most likely. Another goodie you might want to keep in stock is canned salmon. Canned pink or red salmon is even lower in calories than fresh salmon (less fat)

It's true. The Chicken 'n' Waffles food truck has pulled into town. The man behind the truck is Sterling Godfrey, who just recently moved his mobile operation from the D.C. suburbs to the streets of Baltimore. The specialty of the truck is the chicken-and-waffle combo ($9.50), and waffles and chicken all by themselves. You can get waffle plain ($6) or topped with strawberry or blueberry ($7.75). Orders of chicken wings begin at $2.60 for two and end at $10.40 for 10. Also on the menu: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, minced pork barbecue, and half-smokes, as wells as fish sandwiches (tilapia or whiting)

Now that Picture of Health has a new blog home, we're restarting our healthy recipe feature. We will gather healthy recipes from magazines, cookbooks and websites and share them with you. We'd also like to hear from you with your recipe ideas. You can e-mail them to andrea.walker@baltsun.com or meredith.cohn@baltsun.com . This week's recipes is for Curry Vegetables and comes from Chef Meg Galvin at SparkRecipes.com , a free website associated with SparkPeople.com, a free Internet community that helps you track meals.

Emilia Schwartz from Pasadena was looking for a recipe for a salad made with cannellini beans and other ingredients that she said she got some years back when she belonged to Weight Watchers. Bonnie Besche from Baltimore sent in a bean salad recipe she found in her "Weight Watchers Simply the Best" cookbook and thinks it may be the one that Schwartz is in search of. The recipe comes from Sheryl Knuth of Omaha, Neb., and in the note that precedes her recipe she says that she especially likes this one because it helps encourage good eating habits in her children.

Now this is dining. The polenta appetizer ($14.95) at Trattoria Alberto has a consistency and silkiness rarely associated with cornmeal. But then again, polenta is the pasta of Northern Italy, and this is a Northern Italian restaurant. The pleasure delivered by this dish is lifted even higher by the sauce that accompanies it, a rich, flavorful reduction of cream, sun-dried tomato and mushrooms. Hard though it is to top the polenta, the vegetarian lasagna ($21.95) soars. This is a delicate house-made pasta layered with fresh vegetables that have been cooked just enough to release their flavor.