~patches~ wrote:
>
> Thelma Lubkin wrote:
>
> > Dee Randall > wrote:
> >
> > : "Dave Smith" > wrote in message
> > :> Green Beans. I used to like green beans. We grew them in our back yard
> > :> and
> > :> they were great. My mother would freeze the excess and we had enough
> > :> frozen
> > :> green beans to get us through the winter, and they were good even after
> > :> freezing. We buy beans from local vegetable stands in season, but even
> > :> those are not as good as the beans I remember from years gone by. And the
> > :> beans in the grocery store... forget it... they are crap.
> > :>
> > :>
> > : I agree -- Now I only buy the frozen baby (small) ones at Costco or BJ's. I
> > : bought some expensive fresh ones (baby, all packed up in straight little
> > : rows) and they were good the first time - bought them 3 times more and they
> > : were old and awful. So it's only frozen ones for me from now on. No matter
> > : how good fresh ones look at the market, I don't bother. Even at the chinese
> > : restaurants, their fresh green beans are tough and stringy and mostly
> > : tasteless anymore.
> >
> > A friend gave me a couple of pounds of purple beans
> > grown by his brother. These are the beans that are purple
> > when raw but lose the purple during cooking so that they look
> > like cooked green beans. I thought I was getting one of these
> > vegetables bred for its looks, which is usually a taste disaster,
> > but these proved to be the best 'green' beans I've had in years,
> > crisp, stringless, lively taste: my husband gobbled them up
> > as soon as I got them out of the wok, saving them from the
> > overcooking I've had to do to get him to eat green beans
> > in recent years
> > --thelma
> > : Dee Dee
> >
> >
> Thelma, I grow these kind of beans. They are called *Royal Burgundy*
> which is listed as a novelty bean by Stokes. It is a bush bean. IME,
> being a bush bean it is not as proliferic as the pole beans but they
> have a nice flavour and a built in timer. I use extras to make dilly beans.

There's another variety called 'Purple Peacock' which also grow purple
but cook up green.