Now that it is no longer bathing suit season....New Cut Plantation String Beans, pg. 173

I am sure all of our readers spent today packing up their linens, whites, and seersuckers. While I am mourning the end of summer, I think the best season of all is fall, especially with football! (go cocks, I think our readership is more tiger in nature!)  And now that I am safe from the boatrides in bikinis, it is time to get cooking our veggies in fat. Bacon fat that is. 

  We always seemed to eat a good amount of green beans growing up. But the beans always seemed soggy and salty. Not sure if it was always a canned variety or what. Actually I am pretty positive they were from a can (disclaimer, my mom also cooked with a lot of fresh vegetables too).

  The receipt I cooked the other day is titled New Cut Plantation String Beans* by Mrs. Robert Gamble.
   Essentially it involves frying some bacon up, then cooking the onions and beans in the bacon grease, and at the end adding back in the crispy bacon. All the green bean recipes  I have seen require at some point for the beans to be blanched in boiling water. But this receipt just requires some fat, water, and onions. I thought they were quite tasty and crispy. Although the next day, the fat covered beans didn't seem quite as appetizing. Andrew liked them, though I think I hid the unhealthy aspect of it. They look so bright and green, and don't taste as though they were lying in inches of bacon fat.  I would definitely make these again, and they are definitely much much better than the canned variety. 
* New Cut Plantation was on wadmalaw island, and there are a few more receipts in the book that reference New Cut, a small trivia fact for geography and history dorks out there.