Happy munching just ahead…
Lately life has gotten way-out-of-hand busy. I won’t go into the particulars, but I did slow down long enough to consider a jar in the fridge door this afternoon. It had held green olives preserved in lemon olive oil. They were so good that once we’d polished off the last of them, I couldn’t bear to throw away the oil. So I kept it, waiting for the right thing to use it for. (By lemon olive oil, I mean olive oil that was so deeply imbued with lemon that you’d be hard pressed to call it anything else.)
And that thing happened today. This week’s CSA box had a small portion of green beans in it, enough for about two servings. While I blanched the beans on one stove eye, I heated the oil on the one next to it. I put as many of the beans into the olive jar as I could fit and then poured the heated lemon oil over them. When they cool I’ll stash them back in the fridge and let the oil get cozy with the beans. And they will be good, maybe not as good as those olives were, but I’m betting we’ll enjoy nibbling on them all the same.
I can’t claim too much credit for this. I recently read Tamar Adler‘s wonderful book An Everlasting Meal. She’s a master at using every little thing, producing good food in the process of wasting nothing. This is her basic idea, one of many I hope to steal, er, borrow from her amazing collection of food wisdom.
