#fava beans

In the words of @lemonbalmgirl "Oh, your fence is blooming." Our fence is irises, apparently. It's not May unless I post iris photos.

Also, wisteria on the porch. I'm a bit behind on the garden this year, but the spirit of the garden doesn't care and still does its thing.

Yesterday as I was covered in dirt and weeding one of the veg beds a woman stopped her car to tell me she loves my irises, it was sweet. One veg bed is cleared and I planted snap peas on one trellis, scarlet runner beans on another trellis, and a bunch of multi colored bush beans all around.

Rid another few beds of mint, planted onions and cilantro outside, lots of flower seeds inside to eventually put on pots on the porch.

There's still a lot to weed. I fucking hate grass, there's not plots of grass in my yard and I pull it every year and it always comes back, boo! It's honestly the weed I struggle with the most, even when my neighbor's yard is a field of stinky bob.

Friday I'm working set up for the Master Gardener Incredible Edibles plant sale. Saturday I'm picking up plants from some kids in the neighborhood that grow neat things including Cure and Depeche Mode named tomatoes (Blasphemous Rumors and Fascination Street if you are curious) and then going to shop at the Incredible Edibles plant sale. Sunday I'm working an Eco Fair and plant sale at Edgefield for MG.

Hoping to actually get veg in the ground next week, but I still have to clear the fava beans. I had never grown them before and they are lovely, but fussy to prepare.

فول مدمس فلسطيني / Ful mudammas falastini (Palestinian fava bean dish)

Fūl mudammas is a dish of boiled and mashed fava beans often flavored with spices, aromatics, herbs, and vegetables. It is commonly considered to have originated in Egypt before spreading throughout North Africa, the horn of Africa, and the Levant.

Ful is most typically eaten as a breakfast food with bread and raw vegetables, but may also be eaten for dinner. Parsley, mint, garlic, and lemon juice add freshness and zest to the base of hearty, earthy beans. Palestinian versions of the dish are often topped with a spicy دقة ("dugga") of chili pepper, lemon juice, and garlic.

Some researchers consider fava beans to be one of the "founder crops" of the Southwest Asia. A pile of about 2,600 charred fava beans (Vicia faba) discovered in a Neolithic site in Palestine suggests that fava beans were cultivated in the Lower Galilee about 6500 to 6000 B.C.E. The wild progenitor of these cultivated beans is still unknown.

فُول ("fūl") is likely, like many Arabic words, a borrowing from the Aramaic, in which פולא ("pōlā") means "fava bean." The Arabic would then yield the Coptic "ⲫⲉⲗ" ("phel"), "bean".

مُدَمَّس ("mudammas") is probably from مُ ("mu"), verb prefix, + د م س (d m s), a verb root related to hiding, burying, and storing. This may refer to a cooking method commonly used in rural areas of North Africa and West Asia: namely, burying an earthen pot containing beans or lentils and water alongside hot embers and leaving it for several hours, or overnight.

Notes:

The Coptic romanization scheme used is LOC (Library of Congress) 2014.

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I had actually never had these before and just planted them for their nitrogen-fixing roots, but they taste great raw (sort of like edamame) so I've been snacking on them and snap peas for days

I let them go pretty late into the season, but birds and squirrels are getting to them now so it's time to pull them all and let the stalks and shells add some great nitrogen to the compost

Even though I've been cutting them back more and more the last few weeks, I still filled two bags with fresh beans just from a couple plots.