How Well Do You Know Your Vegetables?

Snow Peas and Sugar Snap Peas

Have you ever been to the produce section of a grocery store looking for an ingredient you need for a recipe and come upon what looks like what you need… but the name is different… and there you stand … trying to decide should I get it or shouldn’t I?

Well… I had an even more frustrating experience…. I needed “Sugar Snap Peas” for a recipe for a recipe from Pillsbury… (yes you guessed it…the recipe I just posted)….they confidently referred to frozen Green Giant Sugar Snap Peas… so off to the frozen section I went… Ha!... Right!.... not in a small town in Georgia… none to be found… (in New York I would have grabbed the bag and would have been done with it)…anyway… so off to the produce section I went.

I first saw the display of Snow Peas… but then next to them… looking exactly the same were Sugar Snap Peas…. a dollar more a pound… I looked and looked … I swear they looked the same… no size difference… not plumper…. forget about asking the high school kid restocking the produce… and of course no one else was on at the moment… It killed me… but I bought the sugar snap peas. First thing I did when I got home was look up the difference.

I admit to being spoiled…. I’m from New York… I no longer live or have a house in the New York City area…. but I do have one in upstate New York… just above Albany… the supermarkets are filled with produce… all kinds… you can find pamphlets with information on just about anything… there are people that work there that actually know what the stuff is … I live in Georgia for love… I just wish I could have my supermarket here too!

Now for the answer…. According to Wikipedia….. Sugar snap peas differ from snow peas in that that their pods are round as opposed to flat…. Sugar Snap Peas were developed by crossing Chinese snow peas with a mutant shell pea plant….. so for a buck a pound more …I just bought a round …not flat… pea pod developed from a mutant…. don’t I just feel so smart.

And just how was your day?