Easy Peasy

Firstly, I'd like to let it be known that I never use pea's in my cooking. Snow peas (more on that in another post) and sugar snaps, yes, yes, but not those little round ones! I'm not sure why but I think maybe because Austrians (or at least not our Austrian household) don't do 'meat and three veg' so I rarely had them as I was growing up. I've eaten them here and there since then and while I don't mind them they're nothing to rave about. 

So why have I just shelled two giant plant pots of peas .......and frozen them for later?? 

Pea thief

Pea thieves

Before we went away, last October, I started a new garden and planted out one of the beds with a cover crop of peas. The plan was to dig them in to enrich the soil when we got home, approx 5 weeks later. 

But by that time they were just flowering and I was very busy pulling the rampant weeds and preparing for Christmas. So the peas started developing and I thought I'd leave them a little longer and it would be a novelty to have a few pea's! 

Pea pickers

Ha!!! Yesterday we picked them........ with a lot of help from the young folk, we picked and picked - and even though the pea patch had been regularly raided - we shelled and shelled and we managed to freeze 7.5 kilo's of fat green pea's!!

Pea podders

As I stacked all the bags into the freezer, I couldn't believe what I was doing...... how will I use all these pea's?? Why am I doing this? Do I just have a natural squirrel mentality? 

Not sure. 

But since moving to Tasmania I've been embracing the whole idea of preserving/freezing food a whole lot more than before because this climate just lends itself to that kind of activity. It's cold for such a large part of the year that I feel I have to store away some of that summer goodness for the dreary winter months. Or something like that..... I think.....

I had a quick look to see if pea's had to be blanched before freezing (I like things that don't take much time!) and found a bit of info here .... happily the answer is no!!!!