It’s January and winter has only just begun.  Outside my window snow squalls are, well, squalling.  True, here in the Berkshires the weather has been unseasonably kind so far, so I can’t complain about snow accumulating in the middle of January. We’ve had relatively mild temperatures, and the landscape has been decidedly brown—up until this week.

Snow arrived in force over the past weekend, followed closely by warmer temperatures, wind, and rain.  A drop in temperature into the single digits is predicted for the coming week during the evening hours, which left me concerned about a lack of insulating snow on the ground to protect the roots of my perennials.  Now that there will be a covering—the extent of which remains to be seen—over the garden beds, I can return to my regularly scheduled winter gardening thoughts:  what to do in the garden come spring.  Oh, the possibilities!

Seed orders, plant orders, and garden renovations are on the agenda for today, but first I want to finish my research on marrowfat peas, in particular, growing them from a package I purchased to make mushy peas.

One of the things I plan to do this year is try foods I haven’t eaten before and try my hand at cooking them.  Since I’ve been watching a lot of British mysteries, the first two on my list are mushy peas and steak and kidney pie (without the kidneys, so steak pie, I suppose), the idea courtesy of Pie in the Sky.  By the way, if you haven’t watched this gem of a series, check it out.

Mushy peas sounded downright odd to me at first, but since it’s so popular in Brittain and it seemed easy enough to make, I thought I’d give it a try.  Except mushy peas are made from a special type of pea—marrowfat peas—that are not easy to find around here.  From what I’ve read, our usual green peas just aren’t a suitable substitute.  My next thought was to grow my own, but the one seed source I found listed them as out of stock.  Finally, I ordered marrowfat peas from Amazon to satisfy my curiosity and make some mushy peas.  The package arrived today, so I’ll have mushy peas on the menu tomorrow.  The peas are dried, so they need to soak overnight before preparation.

As for growing my own, I’m going to reserve some from the package and try using them as seed stock for some marrowfat pea plants.  After all, those dried peas are pea seeds.  It should prove to be a good winter gardening project since there’ll be no gardening in the garden for quite some time to come.

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