I even managed to get English shelling peas instead of accidental sugar snaps! YES!

- HOORAY
- PEAS
- GLORIOUS SPRINGTIME, etc.

Well. What should we do with the first, best, most exciting peas of the year?

First I shelled them. Bowl of peas!

When John saw all the peas, he immediately ran to the freezer for bacon. We are the only people on the planet who can make one package of bacon last six months, aren't we? That's ok! It does mean there is always emergency bacon on hand.

I had sort of been planning to just briefly boil the peas and eat the entire bowl with butter. Bacon works, however. I also have a second bag of peas currently hiding in the vegetable drawer. Guess what may happen tonight!

Anyway, one piece of bacon was plenty to spike my entire bowl of peas. Here "plenty" actually means "too much." So I broke out the spinach to compensate.

Spring peas with bacon and spinach

fresh shelling peas (you can use frozen! I won't judge you)
bacon
fresh spinach
salt, pepper

Ok! First, shell your peas. I think this is one of the most fun cooking tasks possible. Peas everywhere! Pop pop pop! I probably had about two pounds of peas in the shell; this yielded about a cup of peas. If you're feeding more than one person (or you really, really like peas), you should probably get more peas.

Dice up a piece of bacon and render off its fat in a frying pan. I think medium heat is best here, since you want the bacon to cook/render evenly, but not to burn. It'll take at least a good five minutes to render all the fat. If you want vegetarian/vegan peas, just briefly warm some butter or olive oil instead.

When your bacon is cooked through, add your shelled peas to the pan. Stir everything up and let it cook together. In the meantime, wash a chop a couple big handfuls of spinach or other appropriate greens. Chard would work well too, for instance. Of course, if you have far more peas than I did, you can eliminate the greens and just make this an all-pea dish. It's all good.

When the peas are just about completely cooked, add your greens to the pan, with water still clinging to them. Add a little salt and pepper, stir, and let cook until the greens are nicely wilted.

Done! Put your peas in a bowl and eat them.

This was good, but it did have a high proportion of bacon fat to vegetables. Seriously, check out that shine. I think I could've added double the vegetables with no ill effects. More peas! Hooray!