A week ago my dad gave me a bag of purple beans from his garden. My dad’s always grown purple beans, for as long as I can remember. It’s a bit out of character with the rest of his garden, really. Everything else he grows is very standard…beefsteak tomatoes, green bell peppers, eggplants, zucchini, spinach. But for whatever reason, he’s grown purple beans most years as far back as I can remember.

But purple beans have always been a disappointment to me. You see, they turn green when you cook them. Cooked, they’re pretty much indistinguishable from normal green beans. I can still remember the first time I saw my mom put a bowl of purple beans into the microwave and take out a bowl of green beans. I was pretty crushed. No exciting purple food for dinner…just the same old green beans. Once I got used to the idea, it was kinda fun to have color-change beans, but I never did entirely get over the disappointment of that first time.

So, when I got a big bag of purple beans this year, I was determined to find some way to use them without destroying their purple hue. So they sat in my fridge for a week while I was thinking. Luckily they were fresh from the garden the day I got them, so they held a week. I finally decided to make a coleslaw to use the beans and a small cabbage from my CSA that had been languishing in the back of my produce drawer for far too long.

The raw beans add a second slightly different raw veggie crunch to the coleslaw…a welcome addition, I think. And this coleslaw turned out to be very good for you (quite by accident.) There’s no oil in the dressing, and it’s full of a spectrum of raw veggies.