<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Daughter Number Four came to visit yesterday afternoon.\u00a0 We chatted and worked on a new jigsaw puzzle, enjoyed dinner outside at the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti.\u00a0 When we came home, it was time to prep the pea salad for the French class potluck this morning.\u00a0 She sat with her dad for a while as I started on that, then came to check on me.\u00a0 It was probably the increasingly dark cloud of frustration forming over my head that got her attention.\u00a0 She took it to be the Bat Signal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat are you working on?\u201d she asked carefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShelling English peas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow does that work?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLike this,\u201d I said, prying a pod open at a seam and shoving each individual pod-dweller into the bowl, \u201conly faster.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo, why aren\u2019t you going faster?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese peas, although organic and very local, may be, oh, an hour or two shy of perfect ripeness. So, the seams don\u2019t just unzip, and the babies don\u2019t want to leave the nest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMay I try doing some?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I extinguished the Bat Signal and moved on to the sugar snap peas. Good news, you don\u2019t have to de-pod these peas. You just have to remove the \u201cstrings\u201d from the two seams of each pod. You snap off the end of the pod, pull the end downward, and it pulls off the strings behind it. I picked up a pod and snapped off the end. It came off clean, failing to disturb the strings in any way. Same with the second and third pods. The cloud of doom began re-forming over my head. I carried on, accumulating a tiny pile of pods with one string removed, and a large pile of pods that had snapped-off ends and both their strings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m done with these,\u201d D#4 said, cheerily. \u201cWhat are you doing with that kind?\u201d I explained and demonstrated, having slightly better luck with the demo pod, removing one of its strings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy do you take the strings off?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giving her a closer look at one of my trophy strings, I told her, \u201cThey\u2019re stringy. They don\u2019t chew, and are unpleasant in your mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDoes it matter how you get the strings off?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo-o-o\u2014what are you thinking?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cVegetable peeler.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you feel you can manage that, feel free to give it a try.\u201d She looked carefully at the difference in appearance between stringed and stringless seams, took peeler in hand, and set to work. Not only did her technique work like a charm, it was quick, too. My Bat Signal evaporated entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next, I turned her loose juicing an enormous lemon, setting her up with our bright-yellow lemon squeezer and a Pyrex measuring cup. She claimed to be enjoying the process, having never used a squeezer-type juicer, only the kind that involves mashing lemon halves onto a dome, which tends to identify quickly for you any little nicks and scratches on your dominant hand, of which you would otherwise have remained unaware. The squeezer model is kinder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While she worked, I sliced exotic radishes from Green Things Farm Collective on Nixon Road. They were long and skinny, red on the top and white on the bottom. Then I got started on the mint. Having not found any at Green Things or the farm stand on Warren Road yesterday, and not having liked what was on offer at three stores, I asked Pat for some from her garden. She assured me that relieving her of mint did not require permission. That, in fact, if she came home one day to find me pulling mint out by the roots, that would be a happy surprise. She\u2019s a wonderful gardener; her plants were thriving. The aroma of mint rising them was heady, heavenly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, when I took Pat\u2019s mint from fridge last night, I shared the scent with D#4. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSmell this!\u201d I said, handing some to her and turning away. I should have warned her how fantastically fragrant it was. Alas, I did not. D#4, expecting run-of-the-mill mint, bruised a leaf to release the smell. After which, she started to cough so hard she had to sit down for a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She forgave me when she was able to speak again, and was able to time the blanching process for both kinds of peas, while remaining seated. She rallied to spin the arugula for me, while I made the dressing, and she stayed till the kitchen was restored to its usual order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The French class enjoyed the salad today, commenting on how pretty it was, how fresh the peas were and, especially how fabulous the mint was. What I enjoyed most was preparing it with D#4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
28 June 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Daughter Number Four came to visit yesterday afternoon.\u00a0 We chatted and worked on a new jigsaw puzzle, enjoyed dinner outside at the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti.\u00a0 When we came home, it was time to prep the pea salad for the French class potluck this morning.\u00a0 She sat with her dad for a while as I… Continue reading Pea Salad<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":674,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions\/674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}