Just plain green beans

Who knew green beans could be so tough? Or at least to convey the concept across cultures, with a slight language barrier. As I was telling my colleague last night, giving her advice on how to teach the cooks a certain meal: if you want a vegetable side dish, you will have to stick around and actually do it in front of them. There is no way—I have been wholly unsuccessful in my numerous attempts—to explain through words that we want to cook the green beans and eat them. That’s it. On the side of the plate, by themselves, in addition to the main dish. They think I am positively out of my mind.

There has been a different result each time I have tried to ask for green beans, and I always find the result after they leave so I can’t see their faces, but from the evidence of the state of the beans themselves— sometimes cooked but without dinner, sometimes uncooked, sometimes cooked but left in the kitchen— it is clear that they leave highly in doubt that they understood me correctly, that I really could want just green beans, plain.

In case you’re wondering, green beans is really the only fresh vegetable they have around here, so the confusion is centered around green beans, but I’m sure the problem would come up for any other vegetable as well. Green beans has simply become a symbol.