This story starts with the receipt of a gift from the earth on a piece of farmland between the Sutter Buttes and the Sierra Nevada mountains. The organic brown rice grown there on the Rue and Forsman Ranch is nurtured by snow fed waters from the Sierras. I’ve had some trials and tribulations learning to cook brown rice well. But I finally got it down, and thought I would try a warm green bean and brown rice recipe with a sesame dressing. (I will post this recipe in a couple of days). Having been castigated by readers in the past for boiling the nutrients out of green beans, I decided to steam them.

Vegetable steamers have these folding leaves of perforated metal that look like the iris on the CBS eye. They have little stubby legs that are supposed to keep them above the steaming water source. So far so good. I got the right size sauce pan, so the steamer basket leaves stayed partially upright, brought the water to boiling and steamed the green beans, covered, for about 5 minutes. The problem began trying to get the beans out of the basket. I tried to spoon them out but the steamer tilted and some of the leaves collapsed. Then I grabbed the central stem with a hot pad holder that was too thick for good touch and tipped the steamer upside down in the sink. Fortunately, the sink was clean. I recovered the beans and put them back in the pan, rinsed them with hot water, then dried them out over a medium flame. Who knew? The eventual dinner was great. More later.

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