Peas are one of those foods that, it is strongly advised, must spend as little time as possible between harvesting and eating. Which means growing them yourself if at all possible—there’s no shorter distance to the kitchen then from your own garden. Last year the rabbits wreaked havoc on our pea plants, but this year the small crop thrived:
Thrived, but, before we knew it, peaked. Peaked and then turned the corner. I watched them daily for several weeks, from the time the white flowers appeared, to the first pods, almost translucent, and the delicate vines, aka, wizard’s whiskers, curling and twisting with a pure garden lyricism, sampling a few of the sweet baby peas along the way, encouraging them to grow. Watched, and waited, and, well, waited too long.
The peas in the upper upper photo—peas that are firm, plump, tender, smooth, bursting with natural sweet pea-ness—came from the Montclair-Bloomfield CSA, part of the first delivery. So they didn’t exactly hop twenty feet from the garden, but traveled about forty miles and a full day in time.
They were shucked that same evening, put in a pot with a knob of butter and cooked with the lid on, and a few minutes later were devoured in all their deliciousness, including by a child who eats almost nothing new.
But our peas, sadly, failed. Or were failed by us, by me in particular. If they looked good last weekend, I thought, they would be even better this weekend. Full of anticipation, I picked them on Friday evening. The vines were thick with peapods. We expected a feast: pick half now, the other half on Sunday, gorge ourselves both nights. One look at the plants told the story, though I didn’t want to see it. The pods were tight, the plants appeared shrunken, the vines no longer reached out for the next level on the trellis. I tried to imagine that the pods swollen with ripeness, but they were stretched with over-ripeness, the peas inside starchy and bitter. The photo below shows Sunday’s allotment: so abundant, and so deceptive. Look close, and you can see it in how the pods are ridged, the hard little marbles within straining to burst free. What a different a week makes.
