battle 24–mystery peas–day 2

Since Melissa had hooked me on sugar snap peas by saying if I could eat sugar snap I could eat snow and then I hated sugar snap, I was becoming especially fearful that I would despise snow peas, even in spite of their jolly name. BFF Lauren appeared not to be deterred by this minor setback; she continued to extol the virtues of snow peas to me almost daily, while simultaneously promising to make me the best peanut butter snow pea tofu dish ever in the history of the world, except not doing it because she obviously doesn’t love me and wants me to fail, and despite this, I just kept on thinking she was telling me the truth about snow peas because I’ve always believed she loves me and wants me to win, even though she obviously doesn’t love me and wants me to fail and she was lying.

That’s what I thought at the end of snow pea night, anyway. Or what I thought was snow pea night.

After hating those sugar snaps with about as much hate as my little body can muster, I went into the next snow pea night with so little enthusiasm, not even warm, fuzzy PJs could get me off the sofa and into the kitchen (arguably, the warm, fuzzy PJs were what made being on the sofa that much more comfortable). David, who has expressed some concern that the failure of this project might mean I’ll stop cooking and he’ll starve, dutifully went to the store, bought peas* and offered to cook.

*I’m going to take a brief detour with the story here to talk about peas. Throughout snow pea week (month) everyone kept telling me how easy snow peas are, how awesome they are, and how I should have no problem with them. And I kept telling everyone how hard snow peas are, how terrible they are, and how much I hate them. But what do you hate about them?, people would ask. I hate how crunchy they are, I would say. Well they are crunchy, people would say. So fat and crunchy, I would say. Snow peas aren’t fat!, people would say. Pfft, I would say. It didn’t occur to me until later that people probably know more about this than I do, but I continued my quest to win “snow” peas.

So, David brought home “snow” peas. Because I was still a lumpy bump on the sofa and had not done any research on snow peas, David did the only thing we knew to do (other than Lauren’s mythical peanut butter tofu magicalness): a stir fry. Stir fry would almost never be my first choice and I don’t think it makes vegetables all that much more edible than when they’re in their natural, dirty (crunchy) state, but since I was so afraid of peas that I was practically stricken dumb and drooly, I didn’t have much choice but to eat what was put in front of me.

David brought me my plate of crunchy dirt. I barely lifted my head. Maggie, on the other hand, perked right up. She loves when we eat on the sofa; she tries to squeeze her face as close as possible to our feet, the coffee table, the sofa, anywhere she thinks there might be a possibility of food spontaneously leaping off our plates into her mouth. Then I had an idea. And this idea, this brilliant idea, was what finally turned me from a fuzzy, blobby mess back into a real person with awesome hair.

“I bet Maggie won’t like peas either.”

David looked at me skeptically. Maggie will eat anything, his look said. Nuh uh, my look said. She loves cheese, she loves bacon, she’s my dog. She’s gonna hate peas, my look continued to say.

“Maggie, wanna eat a pea for your mom? It’s so yummy. It’s goooooood. Mmmmmm.”

With her adorable droopy ears and her sweet, unsuspecting face, Maggie crossed the room in one bounce. I fed her a pea.

She took it greedily, happily, and almost swallowed it whole until she accidentally tasted it. Whoa, Mom! This is some shit. She spat it out. She pawed at it. She picked it up again and gnawed at it, turning it over a few times with her tongue and between her teeth. Nope, she was right the first time; she spat it back out and walked away. Then, as if she realized she had just walked away from food—ferfucksakewhatwasshethinking?—she did an about-face, came back to the now nearly mutilated pea, picked it up for a final review, kept it in her mouth no more than two seconds, spat it out, and abandoned it for good. My cat Moseley used it as a toy the rest of the night.

After that performance, my confidence in snow peas tumbled hard from minimal to nonexistent. I slumped back into the sofa and picked at my food. I. Ate. One. Pea. “Hate it.” I gave my plate back to David. “Thanks anyway.”

And thus nearly ended my battle with “snow” peas. My first loss.

I whined to Lauren the next day. She said, what is it about them that you hate again? I said, they’re fat and crunchy. She said, I’m telling you, snow peas are not fat.

Even though Lauren was a lying liar about helping me win snow peas, about this I believed she was telling the truth. Also, Google verified her story and David finally admitted he had no idea what kind of peas he bought. No clue.

These are flat, crunchy snow peas, which I have definitely not yet eaten (because Lauren hates me):

This is a fat, crunchy (chewed up, spat out, blurry) mystery pea, which Maggie and I both most unfortunately gagged on (because David hates us both):

My Googling and food sleuthing led me to a most shocking conclusion: my mystery peas are most likely sugar snaps, because they possess many striking similarities, including fatness, crunchiness, and disgustingness. HOWEVER, and this is an all-caps HOWEVER, you may or may not recall, but if you don’t I will gladly remind you, that I actually ate sugar snaps during the first pea week, and I won that shit, yo. BAM. Mystery peas: WON, BITCHES.

Since I haven’t even eaten snow peas yet I’ve got no call on them. For all I know, they’re perfectly lovely. So says Lauren (who is pitifully ill today—and I’m sorry for that, hope you feel better, Lollie—but who nevertheless told me to shut up when I told her I love her, despite her lies).