Green beans are in season now. I enjoy eating them, but I hate prepping them. That's a little odd, because I don't dread shelling peas or fava beans in quite the same way, and those processes certainly involve more work. Maybe it's because they always take so much longer than I think they should. They're almost straight and uniform enough to line them up and trim the ends with a knife, but not quite. I always end up cutting off too much that way, so I just do them individually, pulling off the tips by hand.
I catered a wedding last weekend for a very sweet couple who've been eating at my shop for years. They chose a recipe out of my cookbook made up mostly of--you guessed it--green beans. I whined about it at first, then I picked up a case of beautiful mixed purple and green beans from Alvarez Farms. It took a while, but it felt right.
My favorite thing to do with green beans, for my own personal enjoyment, is to make refrigerator pickles. I trim them, then saute some onion and garlic, add vinegar and salt, dilute it by about half, then add them green beans, cook them for a minute, and turn off the heat. They last for a week or two in the refrigerator, but I always finish them long before that.
As far as full fledged canning, any endeavor where people can die if you don't precisely follow directions is not something I should be doing.
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