The Pea Adventure

Last Saturday afternoon I thought it was time to pull up peas. Most the pods were plump with peas and that's the way you want it, or else one gets too little peas to do anything with. In other words, in the best of all worlds, one wants a mass harvest of peas.

  

These are shelling peas not snap. The pods are not edible, well, they wont kill you, they're just not fun to eat, as we experience a month or so ago when I thought I was growing snap peas, and I harvested a few and added them to soup, and they were okay because I cut them up really small. But I did notice the string and thought to myself,  "How on earth do you expect to remember what you planted over 2 months ago if you can't remember what you had for dinner two nights ago?" 

  

"Keep a journal, or maybe a better blog, and you'll be a better person," I scream at myself on the inner-com. This approach almost never works, by the way, but I must say I'm very good at it.

  

Anyhoo, on Sunday morning I thought I was a genius. There sat my pea plants all pulled up from the day before underneath the gazebo on dry concrete with gentle rain falling. Had I waited until today to harvest, I thought, I'd be in muck and mud. But now I can pull the pods and enjoy the rain too. Sublime!

  

So after breakfast, I go sit out in the chilly air and cut pod after pod after pod after pod off these tangled vines and place them in a bowl. More than an hour later I am frozen, but my hard work has paid off. "Look at all the peas you have, Farmer Judy!" 

  

So after much self-congratulation, I set out to shell some of my petits pois for pea soup, which sounded super yummy in this cold weather and in my current state of numbness. And about an hour later of shelling, I have one cup of peas. 

  

Let this be documentation for future gardens that I might grow: a 16 oz bag of frozen organic peas cost what? Five bucks top? Two and half months of caring for the plants and two and a half hours of preparing peas for cooking is a bit much for One Cup of Peas.

  

Anyway the fresh pea soup was okay. I think it would have tasted better made with dried peas, or it probably would have tasted way better if Andersen's made it.

  

Note to readers: Judy woke up Monday morning with a head cold the size of Alaska.

PS. 

I always eat my peas with honey

I've done so all my life.

It makes the peas taste awful funny

But it keeps them on my knife.

- anonymous