fresh Italian green bean salad

garden fresh-picked green beans
Italian-style with goat cheese and pimento

For me, the best time of year is during the summer when it’s time to reap the rewards of our spring-time labor in the gardens!  A perfect time for my family’s Fresh Italian Green Salad and A Kitchen Garden update.

Although my favorite all-time season is spring when everything outside wakes up after their winter nap, I experience just an amazing internal feeling of gratification for an abundant garden harvest throughout summer.  Truthfully, it never fails to overwhelm me how we can feed and sustain ourselves in such a heathy, pure way just from planting tiny little seeds!

Food from seeds!

Seriously, just stop and think about this for a second!  It’s mind-boggling!

If everyone could have a garden, whether on an acreage, farm, or in even in pots placed on a patio or windowsill, we’d all be nourishing our bodies, minds and souls so much better!

I’ve been so fortunate to have been raised in a family of extraordinary gardeners from Italy to Iowa.  Gardening is just in my blood!

garden green beans

fresh green beans from my gardens

When we built our home, I specifically wanted my vegetable and herb gardens to be right next to my kitchen with a door that I could just walk out into the gardens with my sheers and harvesting basket in hand at a moment’s notice.

kitchen garden

my kitchen window and gardens just outside my door

During the winter, I look out at my raised beds through my kitchen window and see them empty and sleeping through the cold.  My thoughts seriously drifting off, as I cannot wait until I can get my hands back in the dirt to plant again come springtime!  As my father used to say, “You’re the one in the family that certainly got the farming gene.”  No one else in my immediate family gardens any more . . . just me.  And I love it!

This week, we picked beans.  LOTS of beans!

Which means that it is that time of year to prepare my ‘go to’, ultra-simple Fresh Italian Green Bean Salad that my mother continues to make to this day and that which everyone eats straight out of the serving bowl without waiting to use a bowl of our own!  Oh yes, we eventually do use our manners and serve this bean salad in a bowl, but when it is first made?  Look out, we go straight in for it and can’t stop!

garden green beans

use about 1 pound of freshly cooked beans

garden green beans

Add about 1 up of chopped onions added to your favorite home-made or store-bought Italian dressing (we use Good Seasons packets and use part red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar in place of regular apple cider vinegar.  And we also always use extra-virgin olive oil instead of regular ‘oil’)

garden green beans

toss the beans into the Italian dressing while the beans are still warm

garden green beans

generously salt and pepper to taste

To amp this salad up a little bit more, sprinkle in some crumbled goat cheese and some drained, diced red pimentos! DELICIOUS!

fresh Italian green bean salad

 I use the same recipe for our family’s Simple Beet Salad

Fresh Italian Green Bean Salad & A Kitchen Garden

Fresh Italian Beet Salad

and now if you love green beans, especially the thin French ‘haricot vert’ variety, you will absolutely LOVE this fresh recipe for

Fresh Haricot Vert Green Beans with Roasted Peppers

green bean salad

one last peak from my kitchen window as a lazy summer day goes by  . . .

kitchen gardens

Enjoy this recipe about my 

Fresh Garden Green Bean Salad and A Kitchen Garden !