battle 8–day 2, kind of–peas

Night two of pea week fizzled out before it even started. As usual I didn’t plan my week very well, so even though I had tons of peas, I didn’t really have the other ingredients I needed to make the peas any more exciting than the basic stovetop version I’m used to. This is actually how I usually do it and it’s usually fine. Usually. I have an idea early in the week what I might eat, but I don’t make any real decisions until the day of, and I just pick up what I need on my way home from work or after I’ve let Maggie out. Usually this is perfectly fine. Usually. Until Monday. Monday we were on Day One Million of the heaviest rains the Atlanta metro area has seen since the. . .last time we had heavy rains. Of course, it was great at first since we’re just coming off the Great Drought of 2008, at which time our governor stood on the capitol steps and prayed for rain. You read that right. Well, you got it Sonny boy. The rains came. And came and came. And then the floods came. I was more or less oblivious to the flooding situation until people started dying. Then shit was real, yo.

I was driving home, the whole three miles from my office to my house, in the downpour on sugar snap pea night when I suddenly found myself in all these treacherous flood-y bits where I thought I might get swept away, never to be heard from again, and just like that, I would never have to eat sugar snap peas (which wouldn’t have hurt my feelings all that much, because I have been oh so unexcited about pea week…peas…gross). I managed to make it home to let Maggie out, but I had no interest in braving the dangers of the flooded roads again to get what I needed for dinner that night. I was stumped. I called Lauren.

Me: Lauren, what should I do for dinner tonight?
Lauren: Pot pie.

So, you remember yesterday when I said I only know of one way to prepare peas? That was a little bitty white lie. I may know of one other way, but I hate it so much I try to ignore its existence. Lauren, on the other hand, has witnessed so many incidents of me having OCD fits over this other way of pea preparation that I know I would never get out of including it here.

Peas in pot pie.

So, OK, fine, I have super hard feelings toward peas being included in pot pies. Here’s what I say, I say, why ruin a perfectly good chicken and gravy and pastry pie with vegetables? Terrible. So I make them better—improve them drastically—by flick, flick, flicking all the vegetables (not just peas, but certainly most definitely the peas) out of pot pies before chowing down. It’s an arduous, time-consuming, anxiety-ridden process, but it’s worth it.

Still, Lauren and I determined real pot pie was too much work and that I could just put peas in a chicken casserole and that would suffice (clearly I wouldn’t put any other pot pie veggies in there, they’re still awful…celery, UGH). “Beige and pea casserole,” she said. Perfect.

Except for the part where I still didn’t have any ingredients to make anything. I might should have mentioned that to her first. Peanutbutter and jelly it is.