I have overeaten too many times in the last few weeks and have been feeling very depressed and anxious about it.  So, today was a new day and it began (and ended and middled) with new resolve.  I was working from home today so had no excuse to eat rubbish and it was easy to eat healthily.  My objective was to eat only fruits and vegetables.

I made a smoothie with watermelon, mixed berries, a banana and coconut water which was refreshing. At the end of the bed full of sweetcorn is this chaotic looking tangle of pea plants. I wish I had kept the seed packet or noted down what they are because this plant is a mixture of green and purple pods.  The green pods are particularly large which is a bonus for me – read on! They look really pretty.

This is my first pea crop of the year.
You may think it is rather pointless to grow peas as they are so cheap to buy from the supermarket. They are a bit of a bother to shuck/pod/peel to get out the little green gems although I find the activity pleasurable.  Eating them raw is pleasurable too! The reason why I grow them is to get the pea pod.  Yes, the pod.  I use it to make pea pod soup which is a sweet and gentle and totally delicious flavour.  Fresh picked pea pods are sweet and crunchy and as long as you remove the stringy part, they are tasty in a salad too. I was curious to know what colour the peas inside the purple pod would be.  They are green. The purple pods were quite tough so I put them in the compost along with the stringy parts and tops of the green pods but I ate the rest of the crop.

Having removed the peas from their pods I steamed them for a few minutes and enjoyed them with a tiny bit of butter.  Ooh yes, they were lovely.  This picture reminds me of a biology lesson on genes when we were introduced to alleles.  Some peas are wrinkled and some smooth.  Extraordinary the stuff that ones memory retains!

To make the soup, I chopped up and lightly fried the last of the shallots from the garden. Roughly chopped and added the pea pods. I reserved the water that I used to steam the peas which interestingly went purple!  I also added 1 tsp of Marigold vegetable stock.  Let it simmer for about 20 minutes and then blitzed it until it was smooth. It was a bit stringy so I sieved it and then it was perfect.  Sweet and mild in flavour and very moreish.  My quantity of peas and stock made a couple of large mugfulls and I enjoyed them both. I did have a glass of wine.  I wasn’t going to but I was invited to have a glass when I dropped Harvey’s friend off.  It was a lovely warm summer evening, Harvey was invited in for a swim and I had a lovely chat and glass of vino.

On the way home I was wondering what to have and had decided a salad would be perfect for me but I would have to cook something else for Harvey.  When I got home there was a lovely surprise.  My gorgeous girl had made dinner for us, having guessed I had stopped for a chat and that we would both return home hungry.  I was thrilled as this plate of roasted vegetables was perfect.  Thank you Lara.

So, a day of eating fruit and vegetables, the only exceptions being some coconut water and oil used in cooking.  Oh yes, and a glass of wine – thanks Ginny 🙂