DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Thai curry — one of my favorite things. I wrote out a shopping list for a red curry recipe I’d clipped from the newspaper last year. One of the ingredients was something I had never heard of: haricots verts. I mindlessly wrote “haricots verts” on the shopping list, assuming there would be a bin in the produce aisle labelled “Fresh Organic Haricots Verts”. This is farm country after all; my neighbors grow a lot of things I’ve never heard of.

But my expectation was unfulfilled: my wife returned from the store with all manner of vegetables, but no haricots. Not only was there no bin, she reported, but the produce guy was mystified. This is a guy who sells vegetables for a living, and he’s never seen haricots, organic or otherwise.

Fortunately, curry recipes are very forgiving, in that one can incorporate just about any vegetables at all. My wife had bought bell peppers, spinach, zucchini, tomatoes, green beans, broccoli, etc., a veritable vegan smorgasbord. And I used nearly all of them in the curry, except for the green beans, because they take too long to prep.

A few days later I was looking in the vegetarian cookbook to confirm the boiling time for the green beans. You’ll never guess what haricots verts are.