G: Yep. If you want basic fresh green beans ready to eat or ready for a quick sauté afterward, blanching is the easiest method.

1. Prep: Rinse them. Snap or cut off the stem end (the end that attached to the plant). You don't need to remove the skinny pointed end unless you want them visually uniform. Cut them shorter if desired.

2. Boil water: Use enough water that the beans aren't badly crowded—roughly 2–3 quarts for a pound of beans is plenty. Salt it fairly generously, about 1 tablespoon kosher salt per 2 quarts. The salt is mainly seasoning, not chemically necessary.

3. Blanch: Once the water is at a full boil, add the beans. Start timing when the water comes back toward a boil. For ordinary green beans:

   • 2½–3 minutes: crisp, bright green; ideal if you're going to sauté them afterward.
   • 4–5 minutes: tender-crisp and basically ready to eat.
   • 6-ish minutes: softer, traditional cooked-green-bean texture.

4. Stop the cooking: If you're not serving immediately, transfer them straight into a bowl of ice water for about 2–3 minutes, then drain and dry. If you're going directly from the pot into a skillet, you can skip the ice bath.

For a very simple finished version, I'd blanch 3 minutes, drain, then sauté them for 2–4 minutes in butter with a little garlic and salt. That gives you a cooked bean that still has some snap rather than the floppy canned-green-bean texture.

G: Yes. In fact, with ¼–⅓-inch potatoes, I'd deliberately use the blanching step to make the timing easy.

Blanch the green beans for about 3 minutes, then drain them well. You don't need the ice bath if you're going to cook them fairly soon; just don't leave them sitting hot and wet in a pile.

Fry the potatoes however you're doing them. Once the potatoes are nearly cooked through and you're mainly working on browning/crisping them, add the blanched green beans for the last 3–4 minutes. Toss/stir them with the potatoes so they pick up the fat and seasoning.

One useful wrinkle: get the beans reasonably dry before adding them. Wet beans hitting the pan will create steam, which works against crisp potatoes.

So your proposed sequence is basically right:

3-minute blanch → drain/dry → fry potatoes → beans join for final ~3–4 minutes.

If your mother prefers softer green beans, make the initial blanch 4–5 minutes rather than extending their time in the frying pan; that way you can soften the beans without sacrificing the potatoes' texture.

G: For potatoes cut so their narrowest dimension is about ¼–⅓ inch, assuming you're pan-frying them in a skillet rather than deep-frying:

• Figure 12–18 minutes total over roughly medium to medium-high heat.
• Turn/stir every few minutes, but give them enough undisturbed time to brown.
• At about 10–14 minutes, test a thicker piece with a fork. It should go through easily with essentially no hard/raw center.
• Once they're tender inside, give them another few minutes as needed for browning.

For coordinating your beans, I'd start checking the potatoes around 10 minutes. When they're almost tender but clearly need another few minutes of browning, add your 3-minute-blanched green beans. Then fry everything together for roughly 3–4 minutes.

If you've got a crowded pan or some potato pieces are substantially thicker than ⅓ inch, expect it to creep toward 20 minutes.

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G: Yep. I checked, and conveniently the sausage and in-husk corn have almost identical cooking windows, so you can run them together.

• Sweet Italian pork sausage: Grill over medium-low heat, covered, for about 15–20 minutes, turning frequently. More important than the clock: get the center to 160°F. That's the manufacturer's guidance for fresh Italian pork sausage. citeturn0search0turn0search5
• Corn still in the husk: Soak the whole ears in cold water for about 10–15 minutes, shake off the excess, then grill over medium heat, lid closed, 15–20 minutes, turning occasionally. citeturn0search6

So I'd make this extremely simple: soak corn while the grill heats → put corn and sausages on together → lid down → turn everything every ~4–5 minutes → begin checking both around 15 minutes.

The corn's husks getting brown/black and charred-looking in places is normal; they're protecting and steaming the kernels underneath. The sausage is the thing where I'd rely on the thermometer rather than appearance—160°F in the center and you're done. citeturn0search0

And given the pissed-off wasp: yes, checking under the grill cover before lighting it was probably an excellent addition to today's mise en place.