Chinese String Beans

I was fortunate enough to be given a bag of the most fresh and beautiful looking vegetables straight out of a garden in Florida. They made the 1200 mile journey via Air Tran in the carry on bag of one of my most favorite people ever. She told me how going through the security, they did a double take on the x-ray screen of her bag. The two guards reviewing the contents, questioned each other asking if they each had seen what appeared to be an eggplant passing by. She overheard the conversation and corrected them by explaining it was a butternut squash! Along with that enormous squash she passed on to me, came a myriad of other vegetables picked from her garden that very morning. One the most interesting in the collection were the Chinese string beans. At first glance, when all bunched up in the bag together, nothing appears out of the ordinary. However, when you take them out and realize that you aren't looking at 40 or 50 individual string beans but 10 or 12 extremely long ones curled up around one another, that's when you know, this is no typical veggie. The longest string bean to come out of their garden so far has been 34", practically an entire yard! Apparently, this is characteristic of the Chinese string bean. I've read where chefs have cooked them in there entirety and served a few of them knotted as a side dish. I however, left the knots to the sailors and diced my beans up. Assuming they have Asian ties by their name, I decided to go that route while cooking them. Sauteed with garlic, onion, soy sauce, chicken stock, scallions and szechuan seasoning, they definitely had an oriental taste after simmering in that mix. It seemed odd serving this along side the pasta and sausage I made for dinner but I couldn't resist making these string beans right away. Having snacked on few raw ones before I started cooking, you could tell right away just how fresh they were. What a difference it makes when you get to enjoy vegetables that haven't been sitting out in the grocery store for days. I will confess though, I didn't notice much of a difference in taste from your average 4 or 5 inch string bean but just for the shear novelty of the size, makes it by far much cooler to serve up on your plate! I'll be checking my mailbox this summer hoping for some more. I don't think Air Tran allows vegetables to fly unaccompanied!