Green Beans with Honey-Mustard Glaze

I love the produce section at the store in the summer because seeing bin after bin of $0.25 summer fruit and vegetables gets me slightly giddy. And even better, the produce is usually locally grown. I live in New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia, and in the summers, markets and farm stands go crazy with tons of locally grown produce that you just can’t beat. Signs everywhere scream “Jersey Tomatoes!” or “Jersey Corn!” I bypassed both of these this weekend and instead headed for some locally grown green beans which I scooped up by the handful. I didn’t really have anything particular in mind when I bought these so I can home, scanned my recipes and made Green Beans with Honey-Mustard Glaze.

Fresh green beans are boiled until bright green, cooled, and tossed in a simple glaze of honey, rice vinegar and mustard seeds. The result was perfectly cooked sweet and tangy green beans. I have to admit though, as I was making this glaze, I thought Why in the world did I want to make this recipe? Smothering a vegetable in sticky honey isn’t really the most healthy way to eat, right? I ended up only using about a third (if not less) of the glaze on these beans (because either I didn’t make enough green beans or too much glaze was made) and actually, they were tasty. But I was still disappointed, mostly in myself. This is a typical case of me being too busy worrying about if I liked the ingredients in a recipe, rather than if I would like the end product. I like honey in my tea and on my biscuits. Not my vegetables. And especially not my locally grown vegetables. Consider my wrist slapped.

The ingredients:

Bring a large saucepan of lightly salted water to a boil and drop in the green beans. Cook uncovered for 5 to 7 minutes or until tender but still crisp. Drain.

Dry the saucepan and return it to the stove. Toast the mustard seeds over low heat just until they pop, about 1 minute, stirring to prevent scorching.