The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Sweet corn, bean, and tomato salad

Bean, corn, and tomato saladA couple of years ago, a friend served a salsa that was so good it tempted even me --- a non-salsa-eater --- to go back for seconds.  The salsa was full of fresh corn and tomatoes, and I figured with a little tweaking it could be turned into a less spicy salad suitable to be eaten on its own.  Here's the result --- a quick, in-season dish that is also delicious.

Fill a pot with water and bring it to a boil as you harvest the sweet corn from your garden.  Drop the cleaned ears into the water and lift them out nearly immediately (30 seconds or less).  Cut the kernels off the ear with a sharp knife, then run the back of the knife down the cob to pull out the sweet juices left behind.

Chop the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and green onions and add them to the sweet corn.  Add the beans, chili powder, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.  We're not fans of cumin or cilantro, but this is the kind of dish that could use either or both if you like the flavor.

Marinate in the fridge for an hour or two to meld the flavors, then pour off the excess juices.  Serve as a side dish for burritos, fajitas, quesadillas, or even pork chops and rice (as I did.)

Our homemade chicken waterer never spills in chicken tractors.


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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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I always admire how you are able to just look at a plant and be able to identify it. I can't even identify the foods in that picture, even after you listed what it was. For example, near the bottom right corner. What is that green, globe-like veg? It looks like a teeny, tiny watermelon to me, but since that's not listed I'm assuming that's not what it is. If only I was blonde I would have a good excuse, but alas I'm just a slow brunette. hehe That really looks yummy though.
Comment by mizztanya Wed Sep 8 13:20:36 2010

That's not a dumb question at all --- I was considering mentioning that in the post, but thought it was already too long (as usual.) That's a Mexican Sour Gherkin, a small, cucumber-like vegetable (which I put down as cucumbers in the recipe.) We're giving them a shot since they're immune to a lot of the molds that take out our cucumbers. Of course, this year, our cucumbers have done awesome due to the high heat and low rainfall (and succession planting) so we didn't really need them, but Mark likes the gherkins. They're cute and bite-sized, but taste a bit different than a cucumber to my tongue. (A bit more sour, as the name suggests.)

The downside is low productivity. We planted a few Mexican Sour Gherkin plants with our other cucumbers this spring, and they didn't start bearing until the others had kicked the bucket. Even now, four little plants only give us a handful of fruits once a week or so. Not what I'd recommend filling your garden with if you only have a tiny bit of space. But they're pretty and climb well, so you could probably stick them into a flower bed out front and no one would know they were vegetables.

Comment by anna Wed Sep 8 13:27:13 2010





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