"Ice cream bean" is a common name for the pods of a tropical American leguminous tree. This variety was sold by a Mexican mother and daughter outside Our Lady of Sorrows; in good weather, many vendors set up on the sidewalk in concert with Sunday services. The mother called it jinicuil vaina (Hee-nee-Kweel Vie-nah), from, respectively, the Nahuatl for "crooked foot" and the Spanish for "sheath" or "pod."
With thumbs alone, I was easily able to split my purchase along its inward curve. A dozen large green beans, swaddled in white, were packed inside (at the time of the second photo, I'd eaten about halfway through). Reportedly the seeds can be toasted, then salted and eaten whole, as a snack, or ground and added to moles, atoles, and the like, but I learned of these uses only later. The daughter had cautioned me not to swallow the seeds while gently working away at their surrounding pulp, which has a pleasant, faint vanilla flavor but a curious fuzzy texture. How about calling it the "cotton candy bean"?
Produce vendor outside Our Lady of Sorrows Church
104-11 37th Ave. (104th-105th Sts.), Corona, Queens
Sunday only
