We had friends over for dinner last week and I stopped at the store on my way home to pick up a few last minute things. I was surprised to see they had sugar snap peas on sale. Usually they have the snow peas but not the sugar snap. I picked up a couple of bags. When I got home I washed some for the salad and couldn’t resist trying a few.
Immediately I was taken back 20 years to my grandparents’ garden. Their garden was actually an acre located across town from where they lived. When we’d go to grandma and grandpa’s in the summer and early fall (which was at least a couple of times a year), we’d all pile into the station wagon and grandpa’s truck and drive across town. When I was little I remember thinking we were really going out into the country – in the middle of nowhere – to work in the garden. In reality, the field was within the city limits.
I remember all of us tumbling out of the car or truck and going over to the fence that surrounded the garden. Grandpa would open it up for us, and in we would go. We lived out in the middle of nowhere – amongst the dirt and bugs – but grandpa and grandma’s garden was different. The dirt smelled fresh. And even if I often complained about working in the sun (and did I complain!), I always loved going to the garden.
I don’t remember all of the things they grew in their garden, but I know there was a plentiful assortment - corn, green beans, strawberries, raspberries, and my favorite, sugar snap peas. Grandpa would have the little containers ready for us – small green pint-sized plastic containers for the raspberries and strawberries and plastic sacks for the beans or peas.
And so we would start. Usually a kid on each side of what seemed like a really, really long (endless, really) row. We would pick, we would laugh, we would fight, and we would eat. Keep one, eat one, keep one, eat one. That was our mantra until grandma would notice and tell us to stop eating all of them. So we would keep 5 or 10 and eat one until we forgot or the temptation became too great and we would go back to keep one, eat one, keep one, eat one.
While I was a big fan of the raspberries and strawberries, my favorite thing to eat was the peas. I loved opening up the bright waxy pods and finding the small green pearls inside. I remember always looking for the really fat pods – the ones with the plump peas that seem ready to burst through the pod at any moment – I loved the feel of the pods and the taste of the peas.
I remember shelling peas at grandma’s house in the kitchen or on the porch. It was boring work, but the prize at the end of grandma’s famously creamy peas and potato soup was worth the work of shelling peas. I also remember watching grandma snap the ends off of green beans. I’m sure others helped, but it’s her hands that I remember grabbing bean after bean and swiftly breaking each end off.
I don’t think about the garden much anymore. When I go home I am often lucky enough to have corn from their garden or be gifted with a pint of homemade jam (which I was raised on – it wasn’t until I was 12 or 13 that I discovered you could actually BUY jam in a store). But it was those peas in a supermarket in Saint Paul, Minnesota, that took me back to the days of grandpa and grandma’s garden in Pocatello, Idaho.
