peas, please.

This post is about two weeks delayed due to the birthday festivities and general craziness of life with two toddlers.  Last night we actually ate the last of the fresh peas, prepared my favorite way.  A quick dunk into boiling water for 30-60 seconds, butter, salt and pepper, chopped chives and mint.  So good.  Although there has hardly been two days of sunshine here, I managed to harvest 30 plus pounds of sugar snap and shelling peas in my first year attempt.  (Feeling kinda proud!)

We had "Spring Thanksgiving" one night to celebrate the harvest and used as many local foods as possible.  Pastaworks fresh herb fettuccine, Juniper Grove Pyramid raw goat's milk cheese, shrimp, and our garden peas.  Garden salad greens and Grilled garden artichoke.  Didn't stay local on the wine, had to break open a a favorite Italian Chardonnay, Alois Lageder.  Matt was a huge fan of the whole dinner, but to be honest the pasta did not turn out as I had hoped.  Probably because I still think the peas, mint and butter just can't be improved upon.

The hands down winner of pea preparation this year has been the pickled sugar snap peas, from the Smitten Kitchen blog.  Everyone agrees, they are divine.  I'll probably have to plant more next year so that I will have enough to can and put away.  But the 8 pounds that went into the vinegar this year will be gone before making it to the Kerr jars.

In other pea news, Fritz is a pea shelling expert!  Wally watched Dinosaur Train (Fritz really could live without tv, Walter really could watch it all day if given the chance) while Fritz and I shelled peas for 45 minutes.  He was totally focused and determined.  Such a beautiful moment with my son.