(I am off on a little adventure this weekend, so this is a reprint of a spring-y piece from a couple of years ago. Go out to your farmers’ markets this weekend and revel in fresh vegetables and all that pollen!)
I wandered through the back yard and start thinking about our summer garden. I am ill-equipped for the heavy labor involved in actual gardening – like digging holes, in the sunshine. Heavens to Betsy! That’s why having a modest raised garden bed is enough of a project for me. I can dig small holes, and poke small plants into them. Weeding? Well, maybe this year I will be more responsible when the daily weeding should commence. I am aware that my limitations are suited to having just a few tomato plants, and maybe a handful of basil plants, in pots. No staked rows of heirloom tomato plants, with thoughts of burbling pots of fragrant spaghetti sauce. There is no gardening staff to bustle around anticipating my every whim, doing my work for me, however much I would like to will them into being. I’m sure you are too familiar with your own fantastical limitations.
It’s too late, already, to plant peas. I needed to have done that work in a cold frame weeks ago. Peas just seem so springlike and green, as they change colors when cooked: they start off a nice medium Girl Scout uniform green, and after the briefest of moments spent in steam they are suddenly jewel-like, and chartreuse, and irresistible. I will have to get to the grocery store and hope to stumble over a cache of fresh peas. Or maybe the farmers’ market will have a seasonal surprise for me this weekend!
The rains this week, while excellent for the burgeoning hydrangeas and the thirsty, unfashionable lawn, have flattened the daffodils and threatened the tulips as yet undiscovered by the deer visiting every night. (The deer did find the few tulips nestled among the pansies in the urns on the front porch, and nibbled them to nubbins. You’re welcome, long-legged friends.) It feels like everything has bloomed early. Some of the azaleas have begun to pink up, modestly, around the edges. Forsythia bushes have burst into full flame in the hedge next door.
I’m thinking of light spring-y recipes while I am plotting the weeding and mulching. It can still be pretty nippy in the morning, yet I long to make lighter foods. No more meatloaf. No more chicken pot pie. Bring on the pasta primavera, with new peas and garden-fresh farmers’ market tomatoes, please.
Lemon Primavera
Our friends at Food52 have a delicious spring salad that is loaded with fresh asparagus as well as peas. This will put a spring in your step and you go out to mulch your raised garden bed: Peas and Asparagus Salad
This is more interesting than a salad plate of wilting iceberg lettuce. It is redolent with springtime: Fresh Peas
If you feel you must cook peas:
Buttered Green Sugar Snap Peas
1 pound sugar snap peas
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon shredded fresh mint
Pluck off and discard the string from each pea pod.
Bring salted water to boil; there should be enough to cover peas when added. Add peas. When water returns to a boil, cook about 3 minutes. Do not overcook. Drain.
Return peas to saucepan. Add pepper, salt, butter and mint. Stir to blend until the pieces are well coated and hot. Serve immediately.
You should try their sweet deliciousness raw:
7 Ways to Eat Sugar Snap Peas
And more Sugar Snap Peas
“If you don’t like peas, it is probably because you have not had them fresh. It is the difference between reading a great book and reading the summary on the back”
― Lemony Snicket
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