What to Do with Overgrown Snow and Sugar Peas

Every summer, Judy and I go to Seattle around the last week of July for a family reunion. The timing coincides with the maturity of the first of our snow pea and sugar pea crops, along with other vegetables in the garden.

This year, we've both vowed to make our gardening far more productive. We're composting seriously now, instead of in a lame way. And we're trying to find ways to harvest and store a far higher percentage of the crop. It will go a long way, too, with only two of us to feed, instead of us and the two kids, who are both in or out of college now.

I found some recipes on the web for snow pea soup. Essentially, snow peas are only good in things like stir fries, or raw, when they are small and tender. The overly mature pods have taste, but are stringy and not very delectable in that state, so turning them into a refined product makes sense.

Here's what I did:

Prepare the basic ingredients - the peas, a big leek, an onion, some celery stalks, olive oil, and chicken (or vegetable) broth:

Put them in a sauce pan. At first, add a bit of the canned broth:

Eventually, add the celery (note that Judy convinced me to also add an overgrown zucchini):

Put the stuff in a blender or food processor:

Strain:

We'll see how well it stores in the freezer.