solarbird | and we're off

I finally cooked with the snow peas from my garden. I stir-fried a bunch of fresh veggies (the peas still in their shells, broccoli from the farmer's market, half an onion, a bell pepper) and served them on top of some pasta prepped in my usual way when I'm not making a sauce¹. It's the first thing I've found where I've really liked putting parmesan cheese on top. A side of applesauce (served cold in summer) doesn't hurt anything, either. Easy and good. The key, as

kathrynt forewarned me, is not overcooking the snow peas.

It's amazing how completely unlike canned peas they are. It's a completely different plant. I'm okay with canned peas historically if I cook them in that way that causes the canned taste to waft off², but this is a totally different and better world. They're much sweeter, for one thing. I mean, much sweeter. And they're genuinely crunchy without being at all hard. It's a much bigger difference than with the lettuce, which was already a big change; it's like an entirely different veg.

Thursday's token: 0.1
Miles out of Hobbiton: 993.3
Miles out of Rivendell: 535.3
Miles out of Lothlórien: 73.3
Miles to Rauros Falls: 315.7

Homework has annoyed me. I'm sure I'm doing this right but I'm getting two wrong answers out of four. I imagine I will end up blaming Excel, I suspect it's handing me the wrong standard deviation for the slope of the line or something. But we're supposed to do this in Excel, specifically, so then you'd think the answer set would also at least have the courtesy to match.

Gir.

¹: Boil pasta of choice to al dente, drain and leave in colander for a moment. In the original pot put garlic-tinctured olive oil, LOTS of pepper, a fair amount of garlic salt (or regular salt if you don't like as much garlic as I do ^_^ ), mix, and heat well for a minute or two. Then return the pasta to the pot and stir briskly until it's evenly coated with everything. You want the olive oil to have cooked in this process - but no more than that, and with a small amount of oil it only takes a couple of minutes at most.

²: Drain water from the can into a small saucepot, leaving peas in the can, open, to the side. Add savory, basil, sage, thyme, and optionally pepper to the water/juice and stir well, along with a little fresh water for volume. Heat the water/juice from the can on low temperature until the liquid is very hot, but don't rolling-boil it. (Watching for fish-eye is about right, if you know your teamaking. ^_^ Some boiling is okay, but it's important not to scorch anything.) It's important that you let this take time, because one of the things you're doing is letting the scent of the can vapor off. As soon as the water is nearly boiling, or just boiling, add in the peas and set the temperature on the lowest possible setting. Swirl regularly, making sure all the peas are completely covered by the liquid. Again, give this time; you're repeating the same process, more or less. Do not allow to boil, because that will break down the structure of the peas, and you're trying to keep them as firm as you can - they've already lost most of their integrity by the time you get them out of the can. Swirl as necessary to keep temperature down if you get too near to boiling; when ready, drain in colander and serve. You're masking some of the canned taste, but are actually getting rid of a lot of it entirely. Try it with good quality canned peas - or with green beans, for that matter. Just change out the sage for rosemary, otherwise it's the same.