Serves 4 to 6, depending on your fondness for beans.

Beans and Greens Salad

2 c. dried navy or Great Northern beans, or 4 c. cooked
1/2 c. dried tomatoes
1/2 lb or so fresh greens (beet greens, spinach, chard, kale, etc.) or 1 c. frozen
1 clove garlic, minced
handful of basil leaves, chopped or chiffonaded
1 T + 1/2 c. olive oil
1/4 red wine vinegar
salt and pepper

1) If using dried beans, cook via your preferred method. I like to soak them, then cook 5 minutes in a pressure cooker at 15 pounds of pressure. Rinse. If using canned beans, be sure to rinse them well to remove excess salt.

2) Rehydrate your tomatoes. Cover the tomatoes with boiling water. Let them steep for about 10 minutes. Drain, saving the delicious tomato water for another purpose.

3) If using fresh greens: Wash in several changes of water until the water is clean. Remove large stems, if necessary. Give the leaves a few big whacks with the knife to make them more manageable. If you’re using chard, save them stems and dice them. If using frozen greens: remove from the freezer bag and chop them up to ensure a more even thaw in the pan. Heat up the 1 T oil in a large pot and add the garlic and chard stems (if using). Cook carefully for about 5 minutes, making sure to not let the garlic burn. Turn down the heat, add the leaves, stir to coat with the oil and garlic, and cover. The remaining water on the leaves should be sufficient to steam them, but add more if necessary. Just cook until wilted or tender, depending on the heartiness of the green. Frozen greens won’t need much time at all—the goal is basically to warm them up.

4) Make your vinaigrette. Whisk the remaining oil into the vinegar. Add salt and pepper to taste.

5) Toss everything together. If time allows, let the flavors marry for at least 20 minutes before adjusting the seasonings.

First, embrace the limitations. You may not be able to eat frozen green beans in a January salad, but they’ll do perfectly well in soups and stews. I have every intention of cobbling together some tasty, summer-y vegetable curries this winter. I hear that the dehydrated ones will work equally well in any sort of long-cooked meat stew. Freezing is easy: just clean the beans, blanch for 2 minutes, then cool and store, just as you would for beet greens or turnip greens.

Second, explore the magical world of brined pickles. I don’t have any pictures because I haven’t made any this year, but in years past I’ve had a field day with this. Absolutely all of the recipes in Linda Ziedrich’s Joy of Pickling are wonderful.

Third—and this is key—be open to possibility. Approach old (or just old-school) canning books with a fresh eye. You might not like canned green beans, but what about a three-bean salad? Or, OK, you might not like a three-bean salad, but are there things that you could change in the recipe without disturbing the sugar/acid ratio? This is how I ended up canning 4-pints of a four-bean salad. I started off with a version from the National Center for Home Food Preservation and updated it by dropping the green peppers, adding garlic and herbs, and tweaking the spice mix. For safety’s sake, don’t change the proportions of salt, vinegar, and sugar. The end product is surprisingly good, not terribly sweet, and—assuming you follow basic rules of home canning safety—won’t give you botulism.

Four Bean Salad (for canning)

6 c. total garden beans (yellow wax, green, Romano, or combination)
1 c. cooked chickpeas
1 c. cooked kidney beans
1 large onion, cut in half and thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 t. black mustard seeds
4–6 sprigs fresh thyme
1 t. pickling salt, or 1 1/2 t. kosher salt
1 c. white vinegar (5 %)
1/2 c. fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. olive oil
1 1/2 c. water

1) Blanch your beans in boiling water for 3 minutes. Drain and cool. Set aside.

2) Combine all the non-vegetable ingredients except for the oil (vinegar, sugar, lemon juice, herbs, spices, etc.) in a large pot and bring to a simmer. Briefly remove from the heat and add the oil. After combined, stir in the vegetables and bring to a simmer. Turn off the heat and let cool; refrigerate for at least 12 hours. (This step is necessary to make sure that the vinegar actually penetrates the beans, making them safe for a water-bath canner.)

3) When the beans are almost done marinating, prepare your canning supplies. Clean and sterilize 4 pint jars. Prepare a boiling water bath and  heat the lids.

4) Bring the vegetable mixture to a boil. Fill the jars with the solids, then cover with the hot liquid, leaving a 1/2″ headspace. Cover with two-piece lids (remember, you can reuse the jars and rings, but use fresh lids every time) and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Refrigerate anything that doesn’t seal properly.

Green Bean and Beet Salad

About 1/2 pound of blanched green beans, preferably a full-flavored variety, like Romano
About 1/2 pound of cooked beets, cut into chunks
a handful of hazelnuts, toasted
a small clump of blue cheese, crumbled
~ 2 T olive oil
~ 1 T balsamic vinegar
Good salt

Mix everything together. Serve sooner rather than later unless you don’t mind pink green beans.

Carrot and Red Cabbage Salad

1/4 head red cabbage, thinly sliced
2 carrots, shredded
1 or 2 scallions, or to taste
handful of herbs (your choice), chopped
juice of one lemon, or 2 T mild vinegar, like rice wine or white wine vinegar
2 T or so olive oil
salt and pepper

Combine everything. Let it sit for half an hour or so, then adjust the flavorings to suit. Then eat.

Carrot and Red Cabbage Salad, Thai-style

Add a hot pepper, chopped, and a cucumber. Instead of lemon juice and olive oil, douse the whole thing with about 1/4 c of nouc nam (fish sauce) and a splash of rice vinegar. Of course, if you do this, it’s no longer vegetarian.

This would be even faster with a mandoline, but I fear for my fingers and therefore stick to knives.

(from Doris to Jilly during a visit to the farm)

(After tasting the egg salad, Jilly responds.)

First of all, there’s nothing wrong with this egg salad. It’s not furry. It’s rubbery. You’ve got two problems. First of all, you undercooked the eggs, so the texture’s not right for egg salad. But dude! You need to eat this right away, because those yolks are going to turn green from the oxidation.

(Doris protests. No!  They weren’t undercooked! They looked perfect! Still bright yellow in the center of the yolk, cooked everywhere else!)

No, Doris, you need to cook them more. A hard boiled egg that’s perfect to eat isn’t cooked long enough for egg salad. An egg for egg salad should be silky, not rubbery. And really, your eggs will turn green. That happened to me once when I was catering. You don’t want green eggs in your salad. You want eggs like this:

Boiled Eggs for Egg Salad

1) Bring a pot of water to boil.
2) Add your eggs and return the pot to a boil.
3) Boil them exactly 11 minutes, then cool.

Bonus Ask the Goats!

There’s also a trick to peeling them. The old saying that you can’t peel a new egg isn’t true. You can peel a boiled egg of any age if you cool it properly. Crack the egg shells while they’re still hot and cover them in cold water. Get it really cold, like, with ice. The cold water gets under the shell and separates the membrane from the egg, and voila! You’ve got a perfectly cooked egg.