Phyllis’ Blog

For the last number of years, whenever I’ve asked Merle what he wants for Christmas, he always says the same thing without pausing for breath. “Vegetables.”

I’ve found this a wee bit exasperating.

He and I live in the city with a 2 x 4 backyard. And, okay, even if we had an acre on which to plant a garden, we wouldn’t be doing it anyway. We don’t have time-and probably not the will, either.

Merle’s request has gotten even more specific recently. He wants lima beans. In fact, baby lima beans.

We both grew up on these little jewels, but they are absolute rarities these days. A few times I fell for the frozen baby limas that lie alluringly in the grocery store freezing units. Tear open the gorgeous packaging and you’re looking at off-white bullets. Even a velvety covering of brown butter won’t raise them from the dead.

Between our local farmers market, roadside produce stands, and the grocery store, I’ve tracked down a pretty varied and plentiful supply of other vegetables year-round.

We and our kids have “Corn Day” in either July or August. We buy freshly picked corn from a local grower and then do it up from scratch our way. That means following an elaborate formula for mixing creamed corn with knife-cut corn to arrive at what we consider the perfect consistency. In other words, you can’t get this stuff in any store anywhere. It’s a project, but we can do it in a day, and we make it a work party. We create Top Ten Lists as we husk and silk and blanch the corn, and debate about movies and generally entertain each other as we cut it off the cobs and bag it. Hot, sticky, and monotonous though the job may be, we’re at it together.

But until this year, we hadn’t solved the baby-lima-bean yen.

Sometime this last spring, Merle was shopping with me at our downtown farmers market. When we got to Mrs. Thomas’ stand (where we buy her home-grown produce regularly), Merle stepped up and asked, “Would you grow lima beans for us? And would you also shell them and blanch them, and freeze them in one-pint packages for us? And would you possibly have half of them be baby limas?” (That last request translates into doing twice the amount of work as regular-sized limas.)

In that moment, I realized why I hadn’t found it within myself to hunt down a year’s-worth of lima beans-on our terms. It was a nearly impossible request.
Mrs. Thomas paused a bit. And then she said, “I think I could do that.”

Merle plowed on. “We need at least a quart per week. That way we can have either plain lima beans or succotash once a week.”

Mrs. Thomas started making notes. I started thinking about what this Christmas gift was going to cost.

We left market that day with our order for lima beans nailed down. Mrs. Thomas was figuring out how many beans to plant and how to allot her time come late July so she could meet these crazy-city-people’s request. She told us the beans would likely be ready in late July. Christmas had already come, as far as Merle was concerned, as he danced out of the place.

We needed to take an extended trip during July. Before we left I called Mrs. Thomas to tell her-and to ask if that would be a problem. I knew the beans wouldn’t survive sitting in the fridge for a couple of weeks until we got home.

“Oh, I’ll freeze them, and you can pick them up when you’re back,” said this woman, who, I had since learned, cans applesauce for another one of her customers, plus cooks and mashes pumpkins for other removed-from-the-land shoppers.

Mrs. Thomas and I arranged that I would pick up the beans early on a market day. Her husband and I loaded bags and bags into my trunk, but before I drove off, I happily paid her, and then she told me a quiet little story.

It turns out that her daughter raised the beans and prepared them, right down to their well-labeled freezer containers. “Our daughter and her husband are dairy farmers in central Pennsylvania-and it’s a terrible time for milk-producers these days. So when you asked me to do this, I immediately thought of this as an opportunity for them. They were very glad for the income.” At that moment, Mrs. Thomas’ reticent husband looked up from the crate of vegetables he was unpacking and said, “Thank you very much for this.”

There went all my guilt for not having processed these beans ourselves, my worries about overloading this good-spirited woman, and my slight chagrin about paying a chunk of money for lowly lima beans.

And Merle had his vegetables-which he rhapsodizes about every time we eat them. You’ll notice that I said “we.” I’m loving them, too.

I’m guessing that all-but-cooked lima beans will become a standing order with Mrs. Thomas. Or her daughter.