The Sorry State of Beans

“Don’t tell them green beans taste delicious, because they don’t. And it will take them years to rebuild that trust again.”
-Coach Alice Chilton on the TV series Ted Lasso giving advice on how to be a good parent.

“Yes! That’s it!” I hollered. Then hit the ‘back’ button a couple of times to make sure I wrote it down accurately.

Green beans are evil. My wife and my mom both claim to love them, but why?

I’ve learned how to tolerate certain beans by adding extras. For green beans, I can add ranch dressing, but more often I top them with a couple of heaping spoonfuls of chow chow.

For the uninitiated, chow chow is pickled stuff. In the south, it’s generally chopped cabbage, pepper and sweet onions, though there are as many variations as there are people who make it.

There’s a Northern version, apparently, and it’s different. It might contain cauliflower, carrots and beans. Don’t want it. I see little value in disguising the taste of beans with beans.

And just to be clear, disguising the taste is what it’s all about.

As a wee lad, my Aunt Judy taught me to put ketchup on black-eyed peas. I did that for years. Now I give them the chow chow treatment.

One bean I don’t douse with pickled goodness is butter beans. Butter beans are beyond salvation and why waste good chow chow?

Look, I’m a Southern boy. With my grandparents and parents, I’ve spent many an hour shelling beans and peas, stringing beans, snapping beans… you name it.

But none of that instilled any love for them.

As I’ve previously written, pork’n beans are the only beans worthy of being on my plate and in my body.

But think about that for a moment:

Since most pork’n beans are made with navy beans (another bean I wouldn’t eat), the way we make them appealing is to drown them in ketchup and sweet BBQ sauce, garlic powder, Worcestershire, and bacon.

Only then will we eat them. And that, my friends, validates my argument for the sorry state of beans on Planet Earth.