
For over a month now, we've been getting a box of fresh vegetables every week through a local farm's Community Shared Agriculture program. The first few weeks were mostly a lettuce mix and mescalune with some radishes thrown in. We also have been getting fresh mint every week. One week we got asparagus. The past couple of weeks have been more interesting though. We've had kohlrabi (for the first time ever), garlic tops, rainbow Swiss chard, baby kale, and english shelling peas. And last week in addition to the mint we got a large bunch of fresh basil.
I decided it was time to do something with the peas Sunday evening and pulled out the peas to start shelling. Dylan decided he wanted to help. And it turns out shelling peas is a great toddler activity. It went slowly at first because I had to hold the pea pod for him (he had a plastic tomato in one hand), but once he set his tomato down, he just needed me to open the pods and he dumped them into the bowl, said "all done" and handed me the empty shell.
I'd seen Jamie Oliver make a pea pesto on his tv show and decided to do my own version. I put the fresh peas (probably 2 1/2 to 3 cups) in the food processor with a large handful of mint and a large handful of basil. I added juice from half a lemon, salt and pepper, a handful of toasted pine nuts, 1 clove of garlic and one garlic top, and about a cup of parmesean cheese. Then I streamed in olive oil until I had a nice paste.
The next evening, I boiled some pasta (I used alphabet pasta in hopes of getting my toddler to eat some) and threw in some frozen peas towards the end of cooking. I stirred a nice portion of pesto with the pasta and peas, and threw in some chopped steamed carrots. I topped the pasta with chicken that was seasoned with salt and pepper and cooked up in my cast iron skillet. A little sprinkle of parmesan and the pasta was complete.
Toddler Note: Dylan liked looking at the pasta but was not interested in eating it. He did eat some cut up chicken on the side and some of the cheesy bread we had leftover from pizza night the night before.