Pass the peas, please

Last week we posted about shelling some purple hull peas.  This week we're going to talk about another kind of cow pea.  The same friend who gave us a bucket full of purple hulled peas told us that he had a field of peas that needed picking and that if we picked them, we could have all we want.  So the four of us loaded up the car and headed over to his house at around 6:30 pm.  We made our way down 3 rows of what our friend calls "Crack peas".  Now I googled Crack peas and get no hits.  They are smaller than a purple hull pea and are green.  I'm assuming that he calls them that because they are addictive? 

In less than an hour we had picked 4 buckets of peas.  While bending over picking many pods, we were able to watch a beautiful sunset in the Western sky.  When we finished the job, we thanked our friends for their generosity.  Bending over picking peas is a little hard on the back, but the hard part was yet to come.  Shelling peas, to me at least, is more work than picking them.  There are machines that you can buy to shell peas - we just use our hands.  We shell them while watching Little House on the Prairie and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman in the evenings.  In just a few evenings, the task was completed.

Now to preserve the harvest.  We blanch and freeze them.  At www.pickyourown.org, a website that teaches you how to preserve all sorts of fruits and vegetables, they tell us that all fruits and vegetables contain enzymes and bacteria that, over time, break down the destroy nutrients and change the color, flavor, and texture of food during frozen storage. peas requires a brief heat treatment, called blanching, in boiling water or steam, to destroy the enzymes before freezing.  The first thing we do is we wash the shelled peas real good.


Washing the crack peas

Then we get a pot of water boiling.

Waiting for the rolling boil

Then pour the washed, shelled peas into the boiling water.

Pouring peas in boiling water

When you pour the peas into the water, the water will stop boiling for a bit.  Wait until it starts boiling again and begin timing from there.  After two minutes of boiling, remove them by pouring the water and peas through a colander over another empty pot.  Tricia invented this process after tiring of fishing out peas with a slotted spoon.


Pouring peas into colander out of boiling water

 Immediately pour your peas into a container full of ice water in order to stop the cooking process.



Ice water to stop cooking process



Pour the cooled peas through a colander and now you've got blanched peas ready for bagging and freezing.



Draining peas for bagging

And here you go - about seven quarts of fresh shelled peas all ready to go into the freezer for enjoyment later.  We have a family-owned meat market in our town that we patronize.  The proprietor makes homemade sausage for us with no nitrites/nitrates added.  If you cut up some of that good sausage and cook along with these "crack" peas with some cornbread made in a cast iron skillet on the side, look out!!  That's how they ate during the depression.  Considering our nation's debt, perhaps we will have to learn how to eat like that again??

Finished product ready for freezing

One last thing, one of the most important rules in farming is, "Don't eat your seed!"  Always save some seed so that you can plant more for next year.  In the photo below, we're drying the seed fully.  When fully dried, we'll remove them from the pods and pour the seeds into an airtight container.  We find an old spice or vitamin jar works well.  Store them in a dark, cool, dry place.  Next year you can plant them and start the process all over again!

Drying crack peas for seed

Pass the peas, please.