As a young boy in the remote New Jersey town called Flatbrookville, I hated peas, those grey-green orbs piled on my dinner plate threatening to roll over into the mashed potatoes (a favorite) and pollute Grandma’s wonderful pot roast. They smushed on my tongue into a slimy mess that tasted unnatural with an undercurrent of vaguely chemical sweetness. And heaven defend us when they appeared surreptitiously in an otherwise wonderful beef stew, nestling among the carrots.
I was not a picky eater. Both my mother and grandmother were wonderful cooks and I liked almost everything they made, except fish (more to do with small bones than flavor), Brussel sprouts (everything wrong with a cabbage, condensed) and, of course, peas. I ate everything put before me, I was, generally, a well behaved child. I have fond memories of most meals: pasta with summer sauce, home-made ravioli stuffed with spinach and cheese or luscious Italian sausage filling, corned beef, venison, al olio, pasta con pesto. The simple mention of these staples make me salivate.
But occasionally my dinner plate was offended by peas.
One morning when I was, perhaps, eight or nine, I “lost” my breakfast and had to stay home from school. My mother had planed at day trip to visit our Aunt Lou, a two hour drive in each direction. The other kids were in school and Grandma had the business to run, so I went along for the visit. Shortly after we got there, it became obvious that I didn’t have a typical flu and Aunt Lou insisted we visit her doctor.
It was acute, gangrenous appendicitis. I was rushed to the hospital and prepped for emergency surgery. I was told that my appendix actually burst in the doctor’s hand as he removed it. I’d been twenty minutes away from major complications or even death. But I was kid from a large Italian family and all I knew was that I was getting individual attention from doctors, nurses, and even my mother and Aunt Lou. It all seemed a fair trade.
A day or so later I was lying in bed, one vestigial organ lighter, when the doctors started me back up on solid food. The vegetable in my first dinner was peas. But they were unlike any pea I had ever encountered. They were bright green, almost shiny, a pat of butter was melting on top of the small pile, its edges taking on the contours of these tiny marvels. I tasted one. No smush! No slime. It actually popped when I bit down on it. And the sweetness. The wonderful sweetness. I pondered this for some time, then finally asked my mother.
“Well, they were probably frozen,” she said.
Frozen. We didn’t get frozen vegetables at home. We either got fresh (corn or green beans from a neighbor’s garden) or canned. It was a different time. Even my Italian grandmother used canned vegetables.
I haven’t allowed canned vegetables in my house since I moved out on my own. And peas are still my favorite meal-time treat.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
