My entire to-do list was shot yesterday.  The day went a bit like this, Pat came over while waiting for her car to be fixed and we spent two hours shelling peas.  Then we went to lunch and she went home.  I put Doug to work.  We spent four more hours shelling peas until the box was gone!  Fingers stained black and green, tired shoulder muscles, and two gallon sized freezer bags of peas was our reward.

I had big plans this year that I would grow everything we ate fresh and preserved this summer.  Peas were a learning lesson.  I grew three five gallon buckets of them and knew pretty quickly I would be short, so I started some in the garden as well.  But in the end I will have enough to eat fresh for a few meals.  I went to my favorite farm to get a large case of peas.  Next year I will plant earlier and I will plant 250 feet of pea rows.

Last year we canned several jars of peas and they were very nice to have all winter.  I did begin to tire of the mushy consistency, however, so this year I decided to freeze them.

After shelling two tons of peas, throw them in a pot of boiling water.  Let come back up to boil and count to sixty.  Immediately strain in colander.

Then pour into a prepared pan of ice water and let sit for a minute or so.

I spread the peas out among cookie sheets and stuck them in the freezer while I went to water the gardens.  They were not completely frozen when I came back in but they were enough that they wouldn’t freeze into one giant block once in bags.  That would make things a smidge difficult if you only needed one cup of peas for a recipe!

Shovel into freezer bags and freeze.  Enjoy fresh peas come December.  Preserving is fun and rewarding and best done with friends!