When you have a generous friend who’s also a talented gardener, your life sometimes takes a sweet, interesting turn come summer. Regular readers might remember my good friend, Pam Lehmkuhl (whose kind husband also supplies me with gorgeous game and fish). Pam recently gifted me a mess of green, green beans and some oh-so-yellow baby crookneck squash. My go-to green bean “recipe” is to cook the beans nearly granny tender, drain, drizzle them with olive oil, and then sprinkle on salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper and really lots of lemon zest. (Great hot or cold.) I adore summer squash sliced and grilled for the most part. Thinking I’d do something different with both of them, I still searched my own blog first because… well, I could. An old Thanksgiving-style recipe popped up where I paired green beans with caramelized onions. I didn’t know how things would end, but I would at least begin by starting a pan of onions on the back burner. While I first considered dicing the squash up and cooking it with the beans for the last few minutes for simplicity’s sake, it sounded tastier to sauté those cheerful bits in a skillet. I’d then be able to add both the cooked onions and green beans to the squash and heat the whole shebang together right before serving. A glance at the garden had me running in with a handful of chives and chive flowers; they could go on top. Couldn’t they?
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