Shelling Peas: Catchup Vol-3

This is the last of the garden pea madness. We finished picking the shelling peas the same day we did the sugar snaps. It took two days to get them all shelled (very time consuming). After that, sadly, they hung around in my fridge for another day before I found the time to blanch and freeze. Actually, I had so many that I froze one cookie-sheets worth to bag, and I dehydrated the rest for soups. Below is a beautiful little pod that shows why its worth it, even though you can get organic peas really cheap at Costco now. Can you get the joy of holding that in your hand and the taste of a hard fresh little sugar bomb? I think not.


Here you can see the crazy scale of how many peas I had to shuck when I got it down to just what was left in the basket. (the bread is the empty pods ready for composting)

And this is when I was just about done. Last year I was intimidated by the idea of putting away all my peas so I just made an enormous amount of pea soup. With all the spices, grilled onion, the ham hock from Sunrise Meats and herbs I put in it, I really didn't note a big difference in the use of fresh peas. So this year I decided to forgo soup, store everything I can for when I don't have a ton of fresh stuff to eat.

Right now, I am "in" with Kohlrabi, many types of squash, a fair amount of carrots, salad, beans, turnips, beets, onions and onion flowers, salad fixings, kale and herbs. Plus I have started sneaking potatoes. I'm eating good. I'll get to posting picture of the rest of the garden from early spring up to what it looks like now after I put up a short post on the fun Basil and I had putting away Cherries for my mum. She had been gone visiting her precious new grand-babies, but ended up missing the entire cherry season! So we went and picked about eight pounds, froze enough for her to make a nice pie or two and froze the rest, yum!

We end with Basil taking the corn on the cob holders and trying to eat peas with them. Good times.