The question everybody asks us at market is: what do you do with pea shoots? The usual favorite is to garnish a salad with them. They are the tender sweet growing point of the developing pea plant and they add a crunchy texture and a pea taste to any salad. When we pick them, some flowers are included to add color to your dish. As you can see peas are strong vines that grow out in many directions; so removing the peas shoots doesn't cause much harm to the plant or its production of actual peas. You can cook with them too. Chelsea came up with an original recipe Sunday morning and it was very tasty. 
Pea Shoots and Sunflower Seed Stir-Fry
Ingredients:
1 bag pea shoots, Chopped
½ cup sunflower seeds
½ cup chopped green garlic
butter, olive oil, or bacon grease
Cooked bacon, chopped (optional)
Brown the green garlic and sunflower seeds in oil. When the garlic starts to carmelize, add the pea shoots and toss while stir-frying at high temp. Add the bacon pieces toward the end for extra flavor and body. Salt and pepper to taste. You may want to serve with a splash of soy sauce or tamari.
Above is a pic of our strawberries. We have so much work in our strawberries! We started with 4,300 and we are probably down to about 3,300 because of the poor irrigation and lack of water over the winter. Now we are making up the difference in water though! We've had more than the average amount of rain in May over the first two weeks. It has been so rainy that we haven't planted a seed since April. We've managed to get a few transplants in by hand but there is no way we can get the tractor into the field with all the mud. Back to the strawberries, we spent many hours weeding them by hand today and only got about half-way finished. The good new is that we could tell that we are only a few days away from harvesting a bunch of strawberries. So get ready for the strawberry recipes because we will have lots! May I suggest strawberries smoothies and margaritas?
Here is our first row of tomatoes! Each row has about 150 plants. We will need to watch our backs with that many tomatoes around. You can never be too careful with Nightshades.-Don
Home grown tomatoes & strawberries...my favorite. Can't wait!
ReplyDeleteHi Don and Chelsea. My kids and I met you at the Farmer's Market this morning. Thank you Chelsea for telling us how to make the yummy pea shoot stir-fry. I was out of sunflower seeds, so I substituted sesame seeds and it turned out very well!!
ReplyDeleteI really like your blog. We are "city farmers" just south of Brookside. I have about 250sf of raised beds planted very dense - intensive planting style. We like to think we are Urban Homestead Pioneers! I like to study what the real farmers are doing and learn along the way. Keep up the good work!
~mary smith~