Flash-Freezing Green Beans a la Granny

The beans just couldn't wait until Thanksgiving to shimmy out of their white blossoms and dangle like earrings from their stems. Each bean is long, slender and shapely like a woman's leg in silk stockings with a seam up its back. I pick them by fistfuls; sometimes twice a day I'll go out and see if there are any I've missed, and sure enough, there are.  Last night, I called Granny and asked her how she freezes her beans which she explained in three simple steps. 

Here's what I did this daylight savings morning a la Granny's instructions:

Wash the beans thoroughly, place them in a pot on the burner with warm water and let them simmer just until the bubbles come up through the beans. Remove from the burner, rinse them in cold water and place in a freezer bag. Squeeze out all the air (apparently, this is important). In order to get all the air out, use a straw and suck out all the air from the bag. (Somehow, I can't imagine Granny with straw in her mouth, attached to a bag, sucking the living daylights out of it; the thought of  it made me giggle).

I followed her instructions step-by-step. What she didn't tell me was to make sure once I took the pot off the stove, to be careful not to place the gallon freezer bag on the hot burner, which shriveled up like the Wicked Witch of the West in nano-second in a gust of putrid steam, then, ignited the fire alarm, which in-turn sent Bebe into a frantic barking fit and Felix into the bathroom tub (that's where he hides when he's a scaredy-cat). 

Once the histrionics were over, I placed the freshly flash-frozen fruits of my labor into our new deep-freeze and closed the lid with an odd sense of satisfaction.