My Lovely Garden, and Roasted Green Beans

We have enjoyed our new house and the opportunities that having almost 3 acres to play with this summer!  Most of it was 3 acres of weeds and trash, but after a lot of cleaning up it is looking much better.  I thought I would post a little about our fabulous garden, since I am mourning the change in weather that is bringing summer and, consequently, gardening season in Rexburg to an end.  This year we planted:

L to R: Dead cucumber plants (ok so two survived and I have baby cucumbers) and Zucchini!

(Front to Back) Pumpkin, which has taken over half the garden, Butternut squash which never produced, and Cantaloupe which never produced either.   I guess not enough of the plants survived for them to pollinate.

Peas and Lettuce (L to R)

Carrots and Green Beans (L to R)

Raspberries!  We got the shoots from a friend of a friend who had way too many sprouting up like weeds and wanted to get rid of them.  We welcome them!

We also had a few fruit trees that were planted I don't even know how many years ago:

Apples

Pie cherries

Plums!

The reason I am excited about my garden (beyond sheer love of watching things grown and produce food I can store in jars or in my freezer) is this recipe.  I like canned green beans.  I do- I grew up eating them that way and I have never warmed up to frozen green beans very well.  I do, however, really enjoy FRESH green beans.  *sigh*  Lovely.  I also REALLY love this recipe... it's almost like having french fries without the starch and empty carbs.  Especially when you put fry sauce on them!  I know... that kind of defeats some of the healthy but at least its better than french fries!  Please try this. It's so lovely.

Roasted Green Beans (loosely borrowed from How Sweet it Is here)

Fresh green beans (as many as you want to eat)

olive oil (or other oil of your choice)

Seasonings (I just use a cajun seasoning salt, but you could use salt and pepper, chili powder, garlic powder, whatever.  I'm pretty sure it will taste awesome whatever you pick.)

Line a cookie sheet with foil.  Spray with non-stick spray.  Dump the green beans on it, drizzle with olive oil.  Toss with your hands to coat all green beans evenly.  Sprinkle with seasonings of your choice.  Put the cookie sheet in an oven at around 425 (this is forgiving, you can do 400 for more time if you already have something else in there needing that temperature with good results) for 30-35 min.  Savor them with fry sauce.  Or some other kind of dipping sauce would probably be fine. :)