peas
This has been an amazing growing season for peas. They love cool, wet weather in the summer and will keep producing until the weather gets above 80 for a few days.
I have frozen over 45 cups of peas. Unfortunately, I do not yet have a full-sized freezer, so I can't freeze any more. We are eating and giving away as many peas as we can! We have been eating them fresh from the garden nearly every day for over a month. I just might turn green.
Here is the story of my largest pea harvest in a day.
It took about an hour to harvest these peas.
Here I am shelling the peas. This took about two hours.
Here is the result after I shelled them. (The bin in the back is the empty pea pods.)
Then I boiled them for about two minutes per batch. I guess this took about 45 minutes, as I had to rinse them in cold water afterwords.
I dried the peas before bagging them. This is so they don't stick together. ( I have since bought a salad spinner for this purpose.)
End result: around 20 cups of peas this evening!
I do not understand how Tops can charge only $1 for a pound of shelled frozen peas. This is a lot of work! Don't get me wrong, though, I am happy to have enough home-grown peas to eat all winter long.
I haven't eaten fresh peas in over 4 years now. I miss home and the bazaars. I buy frozen peas all the time here. Sad state of affairs.