Green beans vs. Wax beans

With the heat, I'm starting to crave nice & easy not too hot recipes, and bean salad is coming to mind. I don't have one of my own, so I'm looking online. Who can tell me the difference between green beans and wax beans? They look pretty similar to me other than colour and what are wax beans in German?

And if you have a good bean salad recipe of your own, feel free to post.

Mostly it refers to the pod inside. They can be yellow to green. The green ones are also called snap beans. The texture is only slightly different, but most people wouldn't notice anyway.

Wax beans = Buschbohne/Wachsbohne
They are similar and interchangeable I think. In any case you have to cook them before you eat them.
I'd boil them and put a simple white wine vinegar vingarette with finely chopped onion on to them while they are still warm so it can soak in.

Sorry, I don't know the answer to your question about green beans. However...

My current favorite bean salad:

one can of chickpeas or kidney beans, drained and rinsed
one round of fresh buffalo mozzarella, cubed
a few vine-ripened tomatoes, cubed
fresh basil (a small handful of whole leaves, don't bother chopping them up)
aged balsamic vinegar or white balsamic vinegar
flavorful extra-virgin olive oil (1 part vinegar to 2 or 3 parts oil)
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Mix it all up and let sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes to an hour. Summer in a bowl.

I was just helping someone who needed simple summer recipes. My summer salads are seriously tasty. Here's the basic idea (copied and pasted here from my advice to my friend):

The base salad recipe, choose one or more from each category:
1. beans, lentils, quinoa, pasta, rice, barley, bulgur, other grains or meat
(chicken, turkey, tuna, etc.)
2. Vegetables: tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, cooked peas etc.
3. Herbs: fresh basil, oregano, thyme, etc.
4. Acid: any variety of vinegar, lime juice, lemon juice
5. Oil: olive oil (2 or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar)
6. salt and pepper, to taste
optional additions:
1. cheese
2. toasted nuts or seeds

When it comes to method, there are two choices:
1. put everything together when it's cold or room temperature
2. add just-cooked and still-hot lentils (or whatever) straight to your
salad ingredients--this will wilt spinach or rucola and warm all the
ingredients, making things slightly more flavorful.

are snap beans the same thing as sugar peas?
thanks for the recipes, I'm going to make a bean salad too!

Dumb qusetion - when making bean salads, should you cook them first? I like those white broad beans, but haven't ventured into bean-salad-making yet.

french bean
sugar snap is a sweeter version of mangetout
Beans are not peas but both are legumes.
Tinned beans are always cooked before being tinned. If using dried beans you must boil them according to packet directions otherwise they can make you ill. waitrose.com

If they need cooking to be edible, yes.

Found this website : http://www.americanbean.org/BeanVarieties/Home.htm
Picture of different dry bean varieties and how to cook them.

Here's a Vegan / Vegatarian website with green bean recipes : http://vegweb.com/recipes/vegetables/index...reenbeans.shtml

Actually, you don't have to cook them. Some people like the taste of both snap and wax beans raw. (I prefer the wax beans cooked though).
I have a great bean salad recipe, but will have to post later when I have time. Not to worry, it is going to be like this for seven weeks I hear (siebenschläfer-German version of the groundhog!).

I like to make grean beans this way:

steam some fresh (or frozen) green beans and mix together with finely chopped deseeded tomato and finely chopped frizzled bacon. Season with some salt and pepper.

Best served warm, it´s also very good side dish with meat.

Well, just so you know what happened (I'm sure some of you out there do actually care), here's basically what I made.

I was feeling lazy and it was hot. I used canned products. I normally wouldn't do this, but I wanted bean salad NOW and not 2 days later after I had soaked the beans and blanched the green beans.

1 big can of cut green beans
2 normal cans of big white beans
1 can of kidney beans
1 can (or was it 2? can't remember now) of corn niblets

open cans, drain, rinse off white beans and kidney beans, put in big bowl, add dressing, mix, shove in fridge

Dressing was just some splashes of stuff put together. I certainly didn't measure it, but I used the corn can as the mixing bowl to save me washing up.

Quite a lot of balsamic vinegar
Quite a lot of olive oil
A fair portion of rice vinegar
A small portion of pumpkin seed oil

I used this mix because it's what I had. As I like it a bit tangy and the beans absorb a lot, I used about half vinegar to half oil. When all was added, the can was about a third to half full. I didn't add salt as all the canned beans had it already. Probably a bit of pepper wouldn't go amiss. It was yummy.