The Perfect Vegetable

The butter bean (or lima bean) is the perfect vegetable: a sinously curved green packet of buttery beauty for the eye and palate. Perfectly cooked, they offer softness but not smushiness, so that I must bite through thin skin to soft inside. A little salt and more pepper and a dot of butter complement the beany flavor, both sweet and earthy.

The butter bean reminds me of sitting with Lucille, the woman who worked for my family for more than 25 years, on the back stoop, slitting their pods with fingernails and popping out the little suitcases, their plopping into a large metal bowl promising deliciousness at dinner.

As a meal into themselves, their soft greeness bordering on pale yellow, they heap comfortably on a white plate. When I eat butter beans with a slice of buttered white bread as their complement, the child in me re-emerges and I taste home.