By June 2022. Summer is here and it feels like the most generous version of the season I can remember. The garden is planted and thriving. The kitchen is busy. Mason is home from school and cooking every day. The channel crossed 400,000 subscribers this week and I received it with the pleasure of someone who has stopped needing validation from the numbers but is still happy to see them grow.
Olivia is finishing her sophomore year with excellent grades and a clarity of purpose that I find remarkable in a sixteen-year-old: she wants to study food systems, nutrition, the intersection of food access and public health. She's found the language for something I've been practicing without fully naming. She knows more theory than I ever will. We've started having the kind of conversations I used to have with myself out loud about why the workshops matter and what more could be done, and now I have a daughter who answers back with ideas I hadn't thought of.
I did a speaking engagement this month — the first real one, a keynote at a Utah culinary educators conference. Forty-five minutes, a prepared talk, a room of ninety people who work with food professionally. I spoke about the gap between knowing food and cooking food, about the barrier being confidence more than skill, about what it takes to fill that gap in communities with limited access. The room listened and at the end someone raised their hand and said, "How do we take this back to our schools?" I said, "Let's talk after." We talked for an hour.
That June, with Mason cooking every day and the garden coming in faster than we could eat it, I kept coming back to the most uncomplicated things — the ones where the vegetables do the work and you mostly just stay out of their way. Green beans and peppers was one of those dishes: straightforward enough to hand off to a teenager still finding his confidence in the kitchen, colorful enough to feel like the season itself, and grounded in exactly the kind of accessible, honest cooking I’d been talking about on that conference stage all month.
Green Beans with Peppers
Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 22 min | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 1 lb fresh green beans, trimmed
- 1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
- 1 yellow bell pepper, thinly sliced
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Instructions
- Blanch the beans. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add green beans and cook 3–4 minutes until bright green and just tender. Drain and transfer immediately to a bowl of ice water to stop cooking. Drain again and pat dry.
- Saute the peppers. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sliced red and yellow bell peppers and cook, stirring occasionally, for 4–5 minutes until softened and beginning to pick up a little color.
- Add garlic and beans. Add the minced garlic to the skillet and stir for 30 seconds until fragrant. Add the blanched green beans and toss everything together. Cook another 2–3 minutes until the beans are heated through and coated in the pan juices.
- Season and finish. Remove from heat. Season with salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes if using. Drizzle with lemon juice and toss once more to combine. Taste and adjust seasoning.
- Serve. Transfer to a serving platter and serve warm or at room temperature alongside grilled proteins, pasta, or as a standalone vegetable dish.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 110 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 7g | Carbs: 11g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 210mg