Bev

Friday, June 18, 2010

Como frijole? How've you bean?


As we all know, I have been on a fresh food kick for the past month. For a girl who lives in a forest, this can mean almost anything because even road kill qualifies as “fresh food” if you get out there fast enough with your shovel ...

But we’re talking about fresh-off-the-farm VEGETABLES, darlings.

Friend Nete, always looking out for my best interests, signed me up for a bushel of shelled white acre peas at Rogers Farm north of here. Yes. I was REGISTERED for peas. Michael and I had to drive up there and claim them by appointment or risk ticking off the farmers, an agricultural “dis” that I’m sure has consequences involving waking up with a pit bull head in your bed.

Going to the farm for peas was glorious! First, I've never owned a bushel of anything. (Maybe I've owned a peck. But I can’t confirm that; I don’t know what a peck is.) And second, the experience of bellying up to claim MY peas and seeing my name in pencil on a damp list was thrilling.

Anyhow, I got so caught up in the moment, I also bought a bushel of lima beans, which required no registration. Free-range lima beans? This was heady stuff.

I went right to work to "put them up" like Nete taught me. (Yes, freezing lessons.) I even wore an apron. I gotta say. When the work was done, there was something marvelous about admiring a freezer full of vittles that will see ya through the winter. I felt so Earth Mother. So Pioneer Woman. So utterly Little House on the Prairie.

Then I remembered that I don’t actually LIKE peas and beans.

Uh oh.

I wonder if the Kenyan marathon runners’ quest for carbs is this complicated. Is this where we get the term COMPLEX CARBOHYDRATES???

2 comments:

  1. That gives "registering" a whole new meaning. "Where are you registered?" "Oh! I'm registered at the farm up the road." "What's your pattern?" "White acre peas!" "Oh!?"

    And road kill? Yesterday we driving along and my husband, Jeffery, burst out laughing (and of course I always miss the funny stuff.) There was an allegator on the side of the road and someone had stopped and cut off just the tail! ROADKILL!!! Only in south Louisiana!

    Loved, Loved, Loved this piece!

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  2. You're talking to a FLORIDIAN! The whole gator would have been gone.

    Thank you for loving the piece! I'm SMILING!

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