Calico and Mississippi pink eye are the only peas we planted this year. We had two patches of the pink eyes—one we planted and the other smaller patch was volunteers from last year’s peas.
We’ve been enjoying eating them fresh. They’ve been so good!
Last week I cooked some fresh peas mixed with all the butter and lima beans we grew in the big garden. Matt declared it the best thing he’d ever eaten. I teased him by telling him he says that about a lot of things I cook.
I learned the very simple recipe several years ago when we sung at a homecoming over in Suches, GA. Those were our favorite gigs to play—there’s always nice people and plenty of good food.
There’s always so many things to choose from that my strategy is to get a little helping of every thing and then go back for seconds of what I really love.
One of the dishes I liked best was lima beans and peas. It was simple but so very good. I asked the lady who made it for the recipe.
She said it wasn’t really anything special just lima beans and peas cooked together and that she used a little canola oil but used to use meat for seasoning before her husband was diagnosed with heart disease.
The beans and the peas came from her garden, I’m sure that’s why they tasted so fresh and good.
I’ve cooked the two together often since then and we always enjoy it. Granny liked it too.
The method I use most often to preserve peas for future use is to let them dry completely and then store them in a canning jar sealed tightly. Sometimes I blanch them and then freeze or if I’m in a real hurry I freeze them without blanching.
We’ve enjoyed canning dried beans so much that this year I wanted to try canning our peas.
I followed Miss Lori’s directions. You can see them here. I was worried that some of our peas were on the dry side and hemmed and hawed about how many to put in the jar since the drier ones would swell as they cooked. I should have put less peas in the jars. We had two jars not seal and the others are really full. But I’m still glad we tried canning them. I know we’ll enjoy the ease of opening a jar for a quick supper and next time I’ll know not to fill the jars so full.
Last night’s video: Pea Picking Time in Appalachia || Hunting to Feed My Family.
Tipper
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I planted Mississippi pink eye purple hulls this year. Just a half row to see if we like them or not. My, they’re fun to grow and tasty! I hope to plant several rows next year and put some up.
I always like to hear how you put up the different crops. We like peas too but I had never thought to put them together with butter beans. I will have to try that. A friend gave me a bag of speckled butter bean seeds last year but they did not make anything. This year I have gotten a hand full maybe every other week, from four little plants. They have been so good to me, my mother would fix butter beans a lot and was thrilled when someone gave her fresh ones she could freeze. She made the best butter beans and corn. I have attempted that this summer with our fresh butter beans and store bought local white corn, and they have been good, not as good as my mother’s but good to me nonetheless. A taste that I have not had in a long long time. I told my husband that I could plant butter beans over green beans. He said he would want green beans over butter beans so I guess he will have to help me figure out more space so we can plant enough of both : )
Hi Tipper and Acorns. I’m trying to catch up on my emails. Things have been really busy the past month. The eviction date came and went. Looks like this is going to become a yearly threat. GOD our Father will look out for us. I just don’t see how the deacon of the local church can be so ugly. I pray for him. I keep everyone here, Papaw Tony, Nana and family and the good folks up Wilson Holler in my prayers. I love y’all.
I’m not much of a pea eater. The only peas I enjoy are sweet peas in a can from the store. I pour off the liquid, add a good amount of cheese and heat them in the microwave for long enough to melt the cheese. I can make a meal of that. Nothing else, just a can of store bought peas. I don’t like to eat store bought cans of vegetables any more than I have to but sweet peas are the exception.
Papaw—That is interesting that you eat cheese in your peas, and it sounds good. My hubby loves sweet peas from the store too…only I drain them and add an egg and salt and pepper and butter and scramble it together with a fork. His grandmother always made her peas like that and he loves them.
I’m in agreement that fresh food from the home garden is better than anything you’ll find in a store in a can. It takes a lot to stay up on a garden and most people just aren’t able to do it alone or with only one doing the tending. I must say my chicken eggs are the best eggs I’ve eaten since I was a child. There’s no comparison to the bland tasting eggs in a store. I’ve noticed the grasshoppers and locusts are everywhere here on a mountain near Marion, VA. I’ve noticed seen anything like this. But beans are one of my favorite foods and pintos and cranberries are the top in my book. Gases given off in digestion is the healthiest, best fermenting gases a human can consume. Dried beans and peas do a body really good!!!! Eat healthy and get out in the sunshine for VITAMIN D. DNA NEEDS VITAMIN D. God bless you all and do take care in this heat. Know somebody in VA is pulling and praying for you no matter who you are because God is NO respecter of persons. He loves us all in spite of ourselves… I’ve made up my mind to keep on keeping on… I have to-got no choice.
My favorite pea that my mother cooked she called them Purple Hull Peas. Absolutely delicious! My parents retired back down south to where they grew up in NE MS. After my mother passed on to heaven, when I would go down, I could only find them in a store in Tupelo, MS. Not sure they are what other people refer to as Purple Hull Peas because these peas are large like a lima bean but beautiful specks of purple in them and oh my goodness cooked with a little meat they are fantastic.
I’m praying Papaw Tony feels good enough to go hunting with Matt. My daddy was a hunter but he never hunted deer because when he was growing up on the family farm in NE MS there were no deer. He was a squirrel, quail, and pheasant hunter and brought home many to add to the freezer. They also canned all their vegetables from the garden. He loved training dogs for hunting, German Shorthaired Pointers and the other I think was English Setters. I loved them all especially Doc an English Setter:)
Dee, I love the fact your Daddy was a squirrel, QUAIL (Bird) and rabbit hunter, there were no deer or pheasant in my area. Now it is all deer, squirrel, turkey and very little of any else. I loved my dogs- English Pointer or English Setter. Watching well trained bird dogs “work” on wild quail was a big joy of my life. I think you may be confusing speckled butter beans (Lima) with Mississippi Purple Hulls Peas, either one is good when cooked with a chunk of fatback or sidemeat.
God bless you Dee, I’ll be saying another doctor tomorrow
Your peas and Lima/butter beans cooked together sounds delicious. I am planning on great northern beans, corn bread and sliced tomatoes for our supper today. We are just happy to be harvesting a few cucumbers and ripe tomatoes from our tiny porch garden this year. I am a little behind on watching your latest videos, but I plan to catch up this evening. I really enjoyed Katie’s trip to see her Pawpaw Tony. Have a wonderful day everyone!
Those sound so good! Next year I want to try growing peas. I have grown green peas but never peas for putting up. Thank you for the tips and how to!
❤️
About the good food at homecomings – you remind me of a saying by a former boss of mine. He’d say “the first two times you get a little of everything. The third time you just get what you liked best.” Sounds reasonable except I heard growing up about ‘your eyes being bigger than your stomach’. And as to peas -seems the best advice is to be circumspect in what one calls them. Like local place names – listen hard to hear what locals say or try to get a local to say it first. If that fails, tack on a “or however y’all say it” and maybe keep the peace that way. I’m teasing of course, but them peas! I swear they’ve got more names than Carter has liver pills! Randy’s adviceis likely best “just call them good”. Lord willing, I’m gonna pull up my last row of “field” peas today, getting ready for winter.
My mother used to use a variation on the old saying about when the shoeless man meets the footless man, that went, “YOU cry because all you have to eat is peas, but there’s a hungry man behind you waiting for you to throw away the pods.”
My paternal grandma and great aunt(on a farm just outside of Columbia, KY)always had a huge garden. I love my memories of them out in it, picking, wearing their cotton sun bonnet and large aprons. The pinto beans they cooked in a large cast iron pot on the wood stove & served with cornbread and sliced tomatoes was a favorite of mine!
My family loves canned peas, and we can a bunch of ’em.
good morning God bless each and every one here today, Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus, please heal the sick, save the lost, comfort the suffering and struggling, make life a little easier, thank you for blessings Lord, thank you for this new day, lead guide and direct us and show us the way , forgive our sin,Lord in Jesus name amen
Amen!
God bless you Annie
Amen! Thank you, Norman! God bless you!
God bless you Debbie
I have never knew anyone to can peas, we just froze them. Now my favorite is the Mississippi Purple Hull. Two favorite varieties in past years were Hercules and Colossus, but the seed for them are no longer available in my area. I think you may be able to buy small amounts of them online. We I was growing planted peas by the pound, not small packs. We would take the dry pods, put them in a burlap sack, hang them up under a shed and keep them until next year and then beat the sack with a big stick and sift the chaff through our hands, letting the wind blow it away, while the heavier seed would fall on a sheet laid on the ground. In better times I thought about buying some of the small packs and planting them just for seed but now between the deer and my health that will not happen. To me, there is no better eating than these peas, cooked with a slab of side meat, unsweetened cornbread and sweet ice tea. I only want my tea slightly sweetened. Tipper, I think I remember the lima beans and peas you refer to, in my area those peas are called butter peas, not crowder peas like the Mississippi pink eye. I just call a pot of them GOOD! I think there may be a small difference between crowder and some called cow peas but we just considered all of them to be crowder peas.
I tried to proofread my comment before posting it, but when I see my mistakes today, I must have been half blind. I am going to blame my hurting ankle, I have been awake a good while during the night with it hurting.
Randy, friends can read right past mistakes and still understand every word, but if you’re intent on finding your own mistakes before posting, here’s a tip someone taught me: Read your text aloud. I don’t always do it. Tipper has kindly fixed a few of my really bad errors before posting, stuff I spotted after sending.
Gene, look at the time of my comments, James, my son, might shoot me if I start reading out loud at that time of the morning! He gets up around 4:30 so I might get by with doing it. BTW I do read them to myself and still miss them, I guess that speaks volumes about my mind!
Randy, I pray your ankle is better soon! Lord touch you!