Friday Friend Recipe #154--BBQ Green Beans

Making my way thru my Friday Friend Cookbook, one recipe at a time.

What is the Friday Friend cookbook: I have about 50 of my closest friends and family on an e-mail forum which I called the Friday Friends (from all over the county). At first, most of them didn't know each other, (they knew me) but over the past 18 years, we've answered and shared silly--and serious---questions, exchanged Secret Santa Christmas gifts, had a dieting contest in which we paid a $1 a week and that money went to a scholarship fund for a Friday Friends son's memorial scholarship, and we went on a great vacation for my 52 birthday.

AND, we contributed recipes for a cookbook.

I was looking at the cookbook the other night and I said, "I should make every recipe in here for my blog."
The Handyman--who knows me better than I know myself (this happened to be a question on the Friday Friend forum once---does your spouse/partner know you better than you know yourself?)--said,  "you'll never, EVER do that."
WELL---maybe I'll show him!  Maybe I will.

Which brings me to this... recipe #154

My Mom's (or my brother's)

BBQ Green Beans

Please don't judge the green beans on these photos.  Taken in the dead of winter with no natural light!  (sigh)  I just don't want to do it all over again.

The beans are good!

They sound weird, true, but they are very good.

So...if I am being honest, my mom turned in this recipe as her's but the only time I've ever had it has been when my brother has fixed it and in my mind that turned into my sister-in-law, Sylvia, who fixed it.

So I was going to tell a story about Sylvia... seen here with my brother below.

So maybe this story is about them both?

In May, we met them at our family cabin in Oregon.

They are 'happy waker-upers' who talk happy talk and cook happy breakfasts, all the while BEING HAPPY!

HAPPY!!!

(I just sat and watched them cook for me!  With coffee in hand.  I am not so happy in the morning)

It was a cold, misty, drizzly weekend--we played cards, and Sylvia won, so she got her name on the family cabin-trophy, THE CABIN CUP.

I made everyone go for a drive--down to the lake,

In the country to see old barns....

Found an old country cemetery....

With graves dating back to the early 1800's.

(very interesting)

And I just like cows.....so I'm throwing in a couple of photos of cows we saw along the way.

But the most fun we had that weekend was going thru some more of my mom's old tubs of pictures and letters.

My mother saved everything and my dad was a romantic-- so, we have letters, cards, short love notes--you name it, we have it.  We are tossing things slowly, but we had some good laughs. Everything was fun to read.

We'll call this one 

"Even Richard: an ode to the Handyman"

in which my father writes:

Kiddo--because that's what he called my mom.

Then he goes on to 'type' her a love note.

(most likely because his handwriting was so bad!)

Where he says the famous line 'even Richard'

(aka The Handyman)

(and by great grandkids he meant wonderful, amazing)

POOR RICH!!  Poor Handyman!!

Even?

Even?

This gave us a great laugh when we read it!  We wonder what he had done?! Because by all accounts they loved him much more than me, their own daughter!

My dad always did think he was funny tho... I also found this note when I was cleaning out my own closets. 

Twenty years ago my dad sent me money for Thanksgiving Dinner.  They were coming down for the week and they always worried that we spent too much money at the grocery store for them.

(and yes, my dad was a private investigator)

(and I don't live at that address anymore)

But gambling?  Dad!  Yes, we lived in Nevada but we don't gamble!

I mean yes, we have a slot machine in our garage, and we don't NOT gamble--I mean if company from out of town comes, we take them, but  day to day gambling?  Nope.  No one who lives in Nevada does.  It's  (shhhhhh......) boring!

Well, I guess my grandkids don't find it boring... nor the Handyman when he passes by his slot machine in the garage on the way back from taking out the garbage--every single time!

(I don't know what the fascination is--you can't win, as we don't have a bank to pay it from!)

I meandered (again), the Handyman doesn't really gamble.  My dad just finds himself amusing.

(We all found him kinda amusing too!)

Anyway--  the BBQ Green Beans are good!

And my parents obviously liked my sister-in-law more than my husband.

Or maybe we just haven't found 'her' note yet.

Here Sylvia is about to become a mother of one of those FIVE (my dad wrote that note before number 5 came along. Or? He only liked 4 of his grandsons?  Who knows?)  great grandsons and the Handyman?  Was having sympathy, I guess.

They really are great in-laws!

They were the BEST when my parents were ill.  

THE BEST!

Even Richard.

Okay---this was recipe #154

140 left to go!