Like anything that isn’t lizard tails or cat food, green beans are a delicacy, especially the ones harvested in the farmers’ fields. Not many people are fortunate enough to eat anything besides the remnants of the pre-nuclear preserved grocer’s goods that early landers were careless and picky enough to refrain from scavenging or the post-nuclear mutated fauna of the scourged lands. Even fewer are fortunate enough to taste even one small thing grown in the fields. Only a handful live lavishly enough to eat daily meals made with the fields’ crops. I was invited to dine with one of those so fortunate, Blessed Admirable. She wasn’t eager to waste any of her”genuine crop” on a common lander like me, but she was courteous enough to share one of her favorite dishes with me; made with what is now a rarity in the scourged lands: snakehead green beans. I remember once scraping at the bottom of a can of green beans that had been opened maybe a week before I had come upon it and was nearly emptied by whoever was lucky enough to have come across it in their own travels. All that was left were scrappings and a thin coat of the beans’ fluids that had dried up in the heat, leaving a cracking crust on the bottom of the can. From the fact that the can hadn’t been completely licked clean, I could tell that it must have been left there by somebody of the upper-class travelling across the scourged lands. Driven by the hunger most are so familiar with, I finished the job for them. It was divine. As soon as the last particle had been cleaned from the tin, I knew that I would ache for a return to such delightful flavor. When I first received my invitation to dine with Blessed, I immediately recalled that can and hoped for something that would finally sate my craving, and I left her home completely satisfied. Snakehead is a fairly common ingredient in the food of travelling landers, given their abundance in the scourged lands. I have eaten more than enough snake to become familiar with its sinewy flesh and its often bland flavor. When Blessed’s chef, Will Burns, announced the dish he would be serving us, the first two syllables made me wince, but the second two filled me with excitement. The two named ingredients were baked together with spices and an assortment of other ingredients in a casserole dish to create what among the upper-class is known simply as snakehead green beans. Although the snakehead is usually the least desired portion of a cooked snake, I found myself craving more. Burns prepared the snake in such a way that made me rethink all of what I had previously learned from my experiences eating snake and inspired me to give what I thought to be a hopeless scourged lands meat a second chance as a pure ingredient that could achieve grandeur. It’s difficult for me to imagine that snakehead green beans are thought of by the upper-class as a low-class meal; even more so difficult to imagine after it was revealed that the green beans used were only canned. The only ingredients used that were grown in the fields were the spices. Despite the upper-class considering it a lowly dish, I consider it the most delicious thing I have ever eaten. I am invigorated with a yearning to someday discover what the royalty of the scourged lands eat when no peasants are around to bother.
-The Hungry Klein
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