Fresh garbanzo beans

I first noticed them as I was making my way up what's known around here as The Avenue. The Avenue is Ventura Avenue and most people in Ventura are terrified of it because it's the main street through the Hispanic/Latino part of town. We live in a really great subdivision off the northern part of The Avenue, so it's often the easiest way home.

Among the panaderias and meat shops are produce shops. During the past few months, one of them, which usually has a truck parked out front with various seasonal vegetables and fruits, has featured big bundles of green stuff that looked hay-like with little green bulbs on it. They seemed to go fast. I was dying to know what they were, but usually when I pass I have a car full of doggies, fresh from their daily run at Cemetery park, which is a de facto dog park.

Then I had to cover a story in Moorpark about four Girl Scouts who've written a book. I usually try to avoid going the fastest way, which entails going down the 101 to Thousand Oaks and taking the 23 out to Simi Valley. I've never been a big fan of freeway driving, and my skittishness has only been made worse by getting hit by a truck. So I take the back way, using the 118, which winds through the beautiful Ventura County farmland through Somis. I may lose 7 minutes, according to Google maps, but it's worth it.

To get to the 118, you have to take the 126 toward Santa Paula and get off at Wells Road. As I was going down Wells, I noticed a dude with a pickup selling produce on the side and he had the weird green bundles. I stopped on the way home to check them out. Of course the guy who was selling them didn't speak English. "What are these?" I asked. "Five," he answered. "OK. Five dollars is fine. But what ARE they?" I asked, to no avail. No one standing around the cart was in any mood to speak English. I opened one of the pods and saw what looked like a green garbanzo beans, so I figured that's what they were. Fresh garbanzo beans.

I paid my $5 and took my bundle home. I looked it up on the Internet and, yes, they ARE fresh garbanzo beans. The next task was to shell them. I pulled all the pods off the plants, then brought them inside to shell. The entire process took about four painstaking hours.

I then cooked them up and made them into a delightful pasta dish. I tossed the pasta with the cooked beans and some roasted garlic that I'd grown. It was fantastic. Rob, of course, didn't like it. But Dena ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for days.

I had left the beans on the counter and was going to buy some fresh lock plastic bags to store them, but they went bad overnight and sprouted. It's a good thing the dish I made was as good as it was or I would have been really, really mad about spending four hours shelling beans only to make one dish.

Fresh garbanzo and roasted garlic linguine

1 pound whole wheat pasta (not the "whole grain" stuff), cooked al dente
2 cups fresh garbanzo beans
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 bunches scallions, cut into small pieces
1 head roasted garlic (drizzle head of garlic with olive oil and wrap in aluminum foil. Put in 350 degree oven for 1 hour)
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

Heat olive oil in nonstick skillet. Add garbanzo beans and scallions and cook, tossing. Taste the beans and when they're warmed through and a little crusty, stop. Toss with the pasta. Add cheese and squeeze the garlic cloves out on the pasta. Toss everything together and serve.