HOW TO SHELL PEAS!

Well, my son's surgery has gone well and he is healing well, but now my MIL is in the hospital with a stroke.

She is doing much better and she is now out of the ICU and into a regular hospital bed. I expect that she will go back to the nursing home soon. I used to take care of her when she got ill, but I no longer can. Well, she is doing some better, at least!

Of course I burned off some nervous energy working outside: that is my nature. I picked the peas. Then I shelled them for dinner.

Now, in the past I have carefully broken open each pea pod and raked the peas out, but this time I dumped the entire lot of whole peas into boiling water and blanched them for 2-3 minutes. I drained them and I set them aside to cool. The pods were somewhat cooked but the peas were still raw and firm.

I then picked up each pod and I squeezed it in the middle. The pod popped open at one end and I slid my fingers along the pod and I stripped the peas out the end. ZIP! 

Now, not EVERY pod popped open at one end, some of them popped open in the middle but no matter WHERE they popped open  I still found it easy to strip the peas out.

It takes a long time to pick the peas, and then they must be shelled. With frozen peas on sale for $1 for 10 ounces, it has to be a labor of love to raise enough peas to feed a family year round. We had enough peas for my family of 4 tonight, but the picking and the shelling had to have taken me 2 hours of work for simply one meal.

For half of that labor I have gotten enough broccoli for 4 meals. And, the broccoli plants take up just half of the space that the peas do.

Speaking of broccoli, I had to go over it 3 times today to make certain that I had gotten out all of the little green worms. I MUST get down to the Family Tree Nursery to get BT to spray on the plants: if I should ever miss a worm and my kids see it, they will likely never eat my broccoli again! For that matter, I would rather not eat any worms myself!

BT is an organic control that is supposed to work extremely well on those green worms, but not affect people at all. It makes the worms stop eating and then they die. It is a shame that the butterfly is so lovely: there are few things more lovely than the white Cabbage Butterflies flitting along a wonderful garden!