Beans, beans the musical fruit...

I got a bumper crop of beans from my garden this summer(and by bumper crop I mean more than seven) which was surprising since we've had a terrible summer, weather wise.  It rained most of July and a good part of August.  Between the bloodsucking mosquitoes and the near constant rain I couldn't be bothered to do anything out there so the weeds took over.  Imagine my surprise when things actually grew!  This of course will all come crashing down around me tonight as the forecast is warning of frost.  Frost?  On August 31st!  It's so Alberta-like.  Anyway, the kids and I went out to the garden with our giant colander to collect what beans we could find.  The purple bush beans did the best so we got oodles of those.  So what does a person do with an abundance of purple beans?  Pickle them of course!

With dill heads from our garden

And what happens to purple beans when you cook them?  They turn green and to my surprise, they turn the brine pink!

And while we're on the topic of purple stuff...we have lots of purple carrots and we grew purple potatoes for the first time this year.  We had them with our dinner and they look like they came from Jupiter or something.  They are purple all the way through, the water you boil them in turns a green-blue color and this is what they look like in the end!

 Crazy!  Would make for an interesting potato salad I think!  Needless to say, my son wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole.