peas

Frozen Peas tend to roll off your fork unless you eat them five-at-a-time, but they're somewhat manageable if there's gravy to glue them together with. Fresh peas taste much better, but they still roll off your fork. When you bite down on peas, their tough little skins explode. I'm...not so keen on exploding food.

Some people control peas by mashing them. Too much work, I'd rather pass on the peas.

They are often used in Indian food and are okay because they're mixed with other ingredients and everything else tastes great! I have no idea why people put so many peas in Indian food. Maybe for the colour, maybe because peas grow in abundance in India?...I don't know.

And then there's (shudder) canned peas.

Peas is a noun that was originally singular, but evolved to plural when the singular "pea" was invented. Interesting, nej?

I've never eaten canned peas (I'm glad), and frozen peas were a treat to be snuck from the bag in handfuls. But the best of all are fresh, sugar snap peas. We would get them pick-your-own at the farm we went to, and on the way home, we played the red/green game. When i said red, whomever was closest to the buckets gave me a beautiful ripe strawberry. But when i said green!, I got a fresh, crispy, sweet sugar snap pea. There is no losing this game (the best kind of game). Nothing about these little legumes has to be tough. Even the shells (in this case) were sweet and juicy.

Peas are purty! Peas taste good with paneer, and they love garam masala much as i do. So, i guess, i like peas, but probably because i have not yet had any bad experiences with them. Mmmm... put them in potato soup. Add them to lentils (at the last minute) when you need a little pop of cool green taste to relieve the warm rich smooth lentilly taste. Before i started writing this, i would not have suspected that i loved peas. But they are a worthy ingredient.