Beans, the butt of a thousand crude jokes, are the Rodney Dangerfield of the vegetable world. And amid the general lack of respect, there is no legume more lowly than the lima bean.
Not just tittered at but downright despised, the lima bean, along with liver and Brussels sprouts, ranks high on many lists of Most Hated Foods.
"They have sort of a grainy exterior, and when you bite into them there's that mushy inside. And the color," said one shuddering lima-loather.
But the much-maligned lima has its champions, and most of them live in West Cape May, N.J., which just happens to be the largest producer of lima beans on the East Coast. Local fans gave the bean its moment in the "limalight" last weekend at West Cape May's third annual Lima Bean Festival.
The daylong event, which attracted 10,000 people, according to festival organizers, included the crowning of a Lima Bean Queen, a lima-bean recipe competition, a lima-bean-eating contest and booths purveying everything from lima-bean soup and baked lima beans to the official Lima Bean Festival Cookbook. There were even green foam-rubber lima-bean hats.
"We're coming out for the underbean," said Bobbi Cherrelle, who founded the festival in 1986, along with her husband, Bill Bertenshaw, and a friend, Dave Hahn.
A reluctant bean promoter was the festival's new lima-bean queen (chosen by lottery), Marybeth Smith of Cape May. "I don't have to say anything, do I? Can I get down now?" she asked.
A surprised Smith, 27, who said her friends had entered her name, donned the green crown and accepted a green bouquet while the Hoffnagle Family Fun Band - a father and two sons who also run a local carpet-cleaning business - played their own parody, "Here she is, Miss Lima Bean."
Festival emcee Bertenshaw assured the outgoing queen that "it's better to be a has-bean than a never has-bean."
Last year's bean queen, Romy Gack, 23, confirming the lack of respect for limas, said that she had endured a lot of jokes about her title. "People made fun of me relentlessly," she said.
Being the Lima Bean Queen, conceded Gack, did not exactly add glamour and excitement to her life. The high point of her uneventful queenly career, she said, was the chance to preside at the local Christmas and Fourth of July parades. Her big chance - an appearance at the Jersey Fresh Festival - went down the drain when the event was canceled. A disappointed Gack said she had looked forward to hobnobbing with New Jersey's other produce queens.
