Green Bean, Potato, and Tuna Salad, Campania Style
Watching my son frolicking in our garden, under blue skies and carefree, is one of the summer moments in the great outdoors that I always cherish the most. He loves to give a helping hand in his own sort of fun way, gathering the fruits and vegetables abounding in the garden that are ripened, colorful, and bursting with flavor.
Like this morning with the green beans, for example, when he playfully decided to forgo the picking on his own part, and opted to discreetly gather handfuls at a time directly from his father’s basket and place them in his own. He laughed and laughed, and had the best time!
We grow lots of green beans in our garden throughout the summer into early fall. Fortunately, they thrive in the soil under the bright, hot Campanian sun as long as we refresh them regularly with waterings in the evenings. We pick them when they are young and crisp before their seeds inside are fully matured. Some of them we eat enthusiastically, raw, right off the vine, and the others we utilize to prepare one of the wholesome and delicious local specialty dishes that scream summertime in the Campania region.