P is for Peas

 

Picture it. It's 2 am, and peas are flying all over the kitchen. Let me set the stage for this scene.

When I was growing up, my father raised huge vegetable gardens--an acre or more. We lived in Town without a very big yard, so friends would let him use land on their farms for his plantings. Every evening after work, he would go tend the garden, and sometimes, my sister and I would join him to work on our jobs - weeding and/or picking. But our main job was when we got home - processing the produce.

When we were younger, we helped our mother and learned the ins and outs of proper canning and freezing. When we were older, we did all of the canning and freezing since our mother worked long hours at her nursing job. We knew that when freshly picked peas or corn came into the house, they had to be frozen (this was preferred over canning because of taste) as quickly as possible because the natural sugars in them started to change into starch as soon as they were picked, degrading the quality. 

So it would go something like this. After an evening in the garden, we would start washing and shelling peas around 9 pm. When we got enough peas shelled, one of us would start blanching them while the other kept shelling. After the blanching, we would cool them in a big dishpan using ice we had frozen in orange juice cans. Then, they went into containers and into the freezer. This would go on until we finished, usually until the middle of the night sometimes.

If you would like to try one,
 I found this on eBay.

We'd then go to bed and get up the next day to handle whatever else there was that hadn't needed to be processed immediately. And so it went. That was until one day when my mother bought a gadget that she thought would help - The Magic Fingers Sheller.  It was a yellow plastic box that hooked up to a hand mixer.  The mixer ran two electric rollers that you fed peas through. The rollers would squeeze out the peas in one direction and the shells in another. And it worked, except when it didn't. Sometimes, the peas would get stuck, and you would have to retrieve them and restart the process. Other times, the peas would fly out of the rollers and land who knows where. 

At first, my sister and I found the stuck and bouncing peas very aggravating, but as the night wore on, we found it funnier and funnier. As those peas ricocheted around the kitchen, sometimes we laughed until we cried. I guess you had to be there to really get it, but those late nights with my sister and the pea-sheller are among my favorite memories of growing up.

O is for Orange

 Not only is it Blogging A-Z month, it is also National Poetry Month. So what better to share today than a poem about orange which has no rhyming words.*

*Technically there is one word that rhymes with orange: sporange which is a botanical term for part of a fern.

N is for Nutrition

Today's offering is a nutrition quiz about vegetables. Below will be pictures of nutrition labels of various vegetables. See if you can guess what the vegetable is from reading the label. There will be a word bank below the labels of possible choices if you want help. Most of these labels are on cans, so the photos are skewed, but I think you can read the information you need to.

I figured out an interesting thing as I was putting this together. Interesting to me, anyway. Nutrition label requirements changed a few years ago. Of note is that the amounts of Vitamin A and Vitamin C are no longer required but can be added if the manufacturer wants to. However, Vitamin D is now required. Some of these vegetables are clearly good sources of Vitamin A and C, but that doesn't show up on the label. That may make guessing a bit more difficult, but go ahead and give it the old college try.  

Number 1

Number 2

 

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

Number 6

Number 7

Answer choices: beets, green beans, peas, tomatoes, white kidney beans, spinach, yams

Answers:

1. tomatoes

2. yams

3. beet

4. white kidney beans

5. green beans

6. peas

7. spinach

So, how did you do?

M is for Melons

 Quick. What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say melons? For me it was watermelon, but I've come to find out that technically it's not a melon at all. Before I go down this hole, first let me have the disclaimer that I am not a botanist and the only botany I have ever studied was paleobotany and most of those plants were extinct.

Watermelon is a melon in practical terms. But biologically speaking, it's not. Melons are in the a different genus from melons but are cousins so to speak as they are in the same order/family? Getting a little mixed up on my taxonomy here.

Yellow watermelon grown by Uncle Billy.

Well, this post is going nowhere. Other activities have kept me from having much time to sit down at the computer and work on a post. I was ahead with posts, but now I'm behind. I was going to finish up this morning before I went to work, but Ward has been in loud meetings all morning and I can't seem to gather my thoughts among the ones that are being discussed with Ward and his colleagues.

So here's what I might have talked about.

M is for melons.

Watermelon, botanically, is not a melon.

Frozen watermelon to use in drinks
or just a cool snack.

Confusion abounds among the terms of fruit, vegetable, melon, gourd, berry, etc.

Explorers used watermelon as canteens.

Wally, who will eat almost anything does not like cantaloupe, a true melon. I love it.

Watermelons originated in Africa.

Hieroglyphics depict watermelon harvest.

Times up. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go.

L is for Look

 or  Look at the Fruits and Vegetables Growing in My Yard

This time of year is magical and so full of hope as fresh growth emerges from trees, plants, and seeds. It is before the heat, drought (or too much rain), and insects of summer.  It's this time of year, that people like to share this emergence and I'm no different, as you may have noticed. So here's the latest update on the fruits and vegetables growing in my yard.

We have a large patch of violets growing behind our forsythia hedge. Violets are a good source of Vitamin C and A, but shouldn't be eaten in large amounts. 

This is one of our older apple trees and if look closely you will see it is blooming from the top down. So far, this has not been a good producer. One complication is that the lower limbs have been trimmed over the years, so it is hard to reach the tree to do many of the treatments that apples need. We have another older apple tree that has the same problems.

We planted this apple tree last year hoping it will take the place of the older apple trees.
The leaves emerged a few days ago. It will be interesting to see if it blooms this year.

There are also two crabapples blooming. These help with the apple tree pollination

The peas are up as well as the beets and radishes. However, I'm still waiting on the carrots and lettuce. While, I was taking these pictures, I realized that I hadn't planted the onion seeds I had. Gonna have to go back and check on that.

I have transplanted the cabbage I cold started in the milk jugs. They are not vigorous yet, but seemed to have survived the transplant. The jury is still out whether the broccoli is going to survive its transfer. I still have cauliflower in a jug waiting to be moved to the garden.

Ward and Wally built fences around the garden last weekend. Hopefully this will cut down on some of the digging and eating that smaller critters do. They already dug up the lettuce. This is a clever design with each side being a panel that can be easily removed for tending the plants.

The pear trees are also in bloom now. Last year, we had a bumper crop,
so we're not expecting as many this year since production is often cyclic.

The sour cherry is also in bloom. Last year, the cherries got some kind of mildew before we could harvest them. We're hoping for better luck this year because these make great pies.

Here's the flowering quince. The first blossoms were killed by a frost,
but more have emerged since then. I have read that the quince from this kind of bush
is very tart, but can be used for jams and jellies. We have not tried it yet.

Borrowing a fruit name, the grape hyacinths are out.
They are neither grapes or hyacinths, but they are pretty.