Saturday, October 22, 2005

FIFO and limas

In keeping with the using-up project and the first-in-first-out principle of inventory management, last night it was the turn of a plastic sack of frozen baby lima beans from Albertson's. Surprisingly there was no flavor of plastic. The beans, although not uniform in size, were fresh-tasting and of good color and texture. K.'s portion went to augment a can of Senate bean soup, also parr of the project. Mine were eaten naked, but for a dab or two of Falfurrias. They tasted so good that they'll need to be replenished immediately, if possible. It's becoming more difficult to find limas of any sort, not just baby limas but also Fordhooks or butterbeans. They've declined so in popularity that now most frozen packets of mixed vegetables do not include them in any proportion, which spoils my personal quick and lazy pasta primavera (long fusilli, also getting tough to find), into which at the very last minute a small box of frozen mixed vegetables including limas is dumped, unfrozen, heated, and cooked as much as I like them instantaneously, or at least by the time the entire contents of the pot is dumped into the colander and then dumped out into a soup plate and ready for a bit of butter or chopped fresh tomato or the like. Seabrook Farms still grows limas, at least for the institutional market. Seabrook, Snow Crop, and Birdseye (of Clarence fame) were the earliest brands of frozen vegetables that I remember. John Seabrook once wrote in The New Yorker about limas and his family business, the farm, the story of the wartime labor force, and much else. I wonder how many years ago. Found it!: 1995 ("The Spinach King"). Now I'm craving succotash, including corn cut off the cob and a few drops of cream or milk.

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