Along with fresh field corn and taters ’n’ maters, previously expounded upon, I’d be remiss if I didn’t spin an ode to the bean, which comes in many guises. In late summer the markets are brimming over with a variety of bulging specimens of all colors. There is the trio of green, yellow, and purple beans, the delicate pink-tip beans, the red and scarlet-streaked tongues of fire. There are cornfield beans, crease back beans, shelly beans, snap beans, soldier beans, stringless beans, wax beans, gizzard beans. There are beans with names like Appaloosa, Aquadulce, Black Coat, Blue Jay, Calypso, Molasses Face, Wren’s Egg. There’s the Sandy Mush Greasy, the Kentucky Wonder, the Early Riser and the Rattlesnake Snap.
And then there are the beans expressions. If you “don’t know beans” about anything you might as well go back to bed. If you “spill the beans,” you might be banished until you can keep your mouth shut. If you’re “full of beans” you might want to go out and dig a hill of taters or shuck a bushel of corn. If you’re “not worth a hill of beans” then Lord help you! But if you’re “cool beans” you can come to supper at my house any time.
Beans have been cultivated since the seventh millennium BCE in Thailand, and since the second millennium BCE in both Europe and Peru. Most of the kinds of beans commonly eaten today are part of the genus Phaseolus, which originated in the Americas…