Raw String Beans

Eating with a meal plan, it is increasingly difficult to incorporate vegetables and fruits into your foods.  Though I have never been known for my healthy food choices or particular love of vegetables, there has been one fresh, crunchy, pre-dinner snack that I've always enjoyed: Raw String Beans.

Ever since I can remember, my sister and I have been helping prepare dinner with my parents, and whenever we were having a side of string beans, the job of cutting off the ends and washing them was delegated to one of us.  I have so many memories, memories that merge into one feeling, one moment of getting dinner ready.  I'm standing over the sink, my hands numb with cold water, feeling the firmness and freshness of the beans as I bend the ends until they finally snap.  There is a residual taste of green in my mouth, because that's how they taste, green.  There is no other way of describing it.  Well, I guess there is, but this works well enough for me.  I have been known to eat half the available string beans before they have even been cooked for dinner, to set aside an especially large helping to not be cooked for me to eat at dinner, and to even request them on summer morning supermarket runs to snack on throughout the day.

Being in college, I am deprived of this luxury.  The first time my parents visited me, they brought me enough string beans to reasonably last me a week.  They lasted two days.  I was in heaven.  I was raving about how awesome they were to a CSF friend I have weekly dinner dates with to discuss a book we are reading.  The next week when we met, she plopped a plastic bag in front of me.  MORE STRING BEANS!  It was wonderful, but it also didn't last.  Hopefully, you can learn from my stupidity.  String beans and ginger ale should not be ingested at the same time.  You'd think two things that taste good by themselves would taste good together.  You'd be wrong.  It is gross.  Trust me.