180 degrees from yesterday’s meat & potatoes post:  I needed to follow up all that red meat with something vegetarian and simple, like beans & rice.  So I sauteed caramelized onions & straight-from-the-garden jalapenos, combined with precooked black beans and homegrown chopped tomatoes, simmered until the beans dried out a bit, and served the beans over Campbell Farms’ Louisiana popcorn rice cooked with fresh corn, cut off the cob.

Now I’m looking forward to the next bean dish:  freshly picked purplehull peas, cooked with bacon, onions, and garlic.  These days, my pea patch is producing about two servings of peas every three or four days.  Sure, I could refrigerate the unshelled peas until I had a potful, but the green, just-picked taste and ultra-tender texture might subside.  I’d rather enjoy a ramekin of perfect peas than a whole mess of slightly older ones.