If you can’t stand the heat………

The beginning of summer brings a whole lot of exciting things from the garden or the farmers market that we have been waiting for all winter. For me, it is the arrival of strawberries to be lovingly consumed with cream, followed by the availability of real peas. By real peas I mean peas still in the pod, not frozen or canned, though they are an acceptable substitute. Peas in the pod that that take me back to the days in World War II, when we had two allotments and memories of my blind grandmother sitting in an armchair while she shelled the peas for dinner, one of the few tasks she could still achieve successfully. My first pea shelling efforts this year were at the kitchen table, but I ran into a snag, when the occasional pea that escaped in the course of the shelling would roll in any direction across the floor, making their recovery a challenge. I then came up with an improved system, borrowed from memories of my granny. I moved into the living room and sat on the couch with the receptacle for shelled peas between my legs, and the unshelled peas in a bag on my right, and a container for the empty pods on my left. Any pea escaping was trapped between my legs, so they did not reach the floor. It would have been even better if I had worn a skirt, but I do not have one. The first time I tried this, all went smoothly, but perhaps I became overconfident.

I was three quarters of the way through the process of shelling a pound of pea, when some how I knocked the pan off my lap and onto the living room floor, providing individual peas with enough momentum. Fifteen minutes later I had the peas safely gathered back in the saucepan. I shelled the remaining peas and then took them all in to the kitchen, where I put the pan under the cold tap while I disposed of the pods, Unfortunately the tap was running full and it filled the saucepan and many of the peas floated out into the sink. The plug was not in and they would all have escaped down the drain were it not for a pot scourer that was stuck in the plug hole. Many peas were thus recovered, rewashed, and consumed with enthusiasm.

For my wife, it is the arrival of the blue berry season that is eagerly awaited. had purchased blueberries at the same time as I had purchased the peas, a pint of them in a cardboard container, which we stored in the refrigerator for use at breakfast. The cardboard container got a bit soggy, so we transferred them to an empty strawberry punnet. Unfortunately the spaces on the corners were large enough for individual blue berries to escape, so we enclosed the punnet in an empty bread bag, which was a sufficiently tight fit to prevent the blueberries from escaping from the corners. We then returned them to the frig. While making dinner I was trying to retrieve something else form in there, and in the process knocked over the blueberry container. We had prevented them from escaping from the corners, but not from the top, so now the kitchen floor was covered with blueberries rather then peas. Recovery took place, and it was time for dinner, I did drop ice cream on the floor, but you can mop that up.