I had a bag of Lady Cream Peas from the Camelia Company. Camelia seems to be the company to get these dried peas from.

I had transferred these dry peas to a small canning jar. The Dukes Mayo jar lids (those yellow soft plastic ones) fit the quart canning jar lids, so I am able to store both cooked items (soups) and dry veggies prior to cooking.

So earlier today, I put the peas in a small bowl and added water, salt and baking soda to them. After a few hours I was visually able to tell that the beans had become slightly larger and soaked up some of the liquid. A few hours later I transferred half of the soaked peas to a large cooking pot, added some chicken broth & water, some seasoning meat and started cooking them. *I’ve already added some S&P and garlic, with some margarine also. I plan to add some sauteed onion about 30 minutes into the cooking process.

I can already tell that I am going to like the flavor of these peas. The broth already has good flavor.

I thought I was going to need to cook the peas for over an hour, but about 35 minutes into the cooking time, I tasted one of the peas and it was already soft & tender. So, I sauteed the onion quickly, added it to the peas, and took the peas off the heat. They are now cooling on the stove top.

An extremely soft “melt in your mouth” pea, with a mild flavor. I definitely want to try these peas in other venues, such as my vegetable soup, and maybe with lentils.

NOTE: I decided to only cook half of the soaked peas, so I put the rest, without the soaking liquid into a Tupperware container and placed that in the freezer. I did use the soaking liquid to start soaking some other beans. I think the other beans were some that were left over from the Speckled Butter Beans.

Might be interesting to mix Lady Cream Peas, Yellow Eye and Black Eyed Peas in a single dish. I recall the Yellow Eye Peas had a slight Black Eyed Pea flavor, and I think the Lady Cream Peas do also.

NOTE [11/12/22]: I had some dried green split peas that I soaked for several hours. I also had a large (for my personal use) ham hock that I probably have had for a year or more. This was one of those that I had bought at Food Lion, and I thought it had a bone in it, but when I cut into it, there was no bone. The company had a way of cutting a strip of country ham and placing it over the cut end of the hock. It finally came to me that I had better use this before it went bad.

When I found that there was no bone to cut through, I sliced the ham hock into 3 fairly equal portions, and froze two of them (separately packaged).

I drained the soaking liquid from the green peas, and added some chicken broth to the pot. I sliced the third of the ham hock and put those slices in the pot. I also took out the frozen Lady Cream Peas (that had already been soaked), and put a good portion of them in with the split green peas. But, here was the surprise… I don’t think it took even 45 minutes to completely cook the green split peas & and Lady Cream Peas. I got up to take a look, and saw that the green peas were already breaking down, but the Lady Cream Peas were still intact. The surprise was that stirring the pot broke down most of the green peas, and when I tried a Lady Cream Pea, it was already completely cooked through. It wasn’t hard, or mealy, it was cooked and “melt in your mouth” soft.

See the photos. This pea combination looks “cool” (a word I am using in learning German) and the flavors do go great together.

I just tried some more of these peas and I have to say that I can’t imagine the flavors becoming any better if you refrigerated them overnight (as you do to make exceptional black eyed peas). *Make this! Combine these peas for a really good soup.

It had been a long while since I had made one of these collages.

As I walked along the meat isle at the IGA, I saw some packages of “stew beef”. Most of these packages contained “family” size portions of beef chunks, but I then spied a “REDUCED” sticker on a small package. I looked closer. Only $1.73 total, reduced from about $3.42 and about .83 lbs. of beef chuck. I put the package in my cart, and made a note to try and make sure that I was charged the reduced rate. *I think I noted at the register that I had been charged the lower amount.

There were some dark red chunks of beef visible through the plastic. Once I opened the package, I did see that a few of the chunks were lighter in color. I sifted through the larger chunks, and cut them into smaller pieces.

I did get online to look for “Stew Beef Recipe” and then “Vegetable Beef Soup”. I thought I had thrown away some old (beginning to soften) white potatoes, and when I went looking, sure enough I had no potatoes. Had used the last of the little white potatoes that I bought at Pate’s weeks ago. Vegetable soup without potatoes is lacking, but I wanted to get this meat on the stove.

I braised the beef chunks in the pot, in olive oil. I chopped up some onion and added it to the pot. Added a can of Roasted Garlic diced tomatoes and set all of that to cook for an hour, or more. Added some Agave Nectar, and some Splenda sweetener to the pot, some marjoram, thyme, ground coriander, S&P .

Cut up some carrot, and got a small container of garden peas, lima beans & corn that I had frozen (a long time ago) and thawed that in the microwave. *Went looking for canned corn, and could not find any (small or medium cans), thought I had frozen some from a previous soup, and after digging around did find the Tupperware container in the freezer. The frozen veggies may not add anything to this soup (which is beginning to taste pretty good), but hopefully won’t detract from the flavor.

I also added a few dried Lady Cream Peas, and then thought, “Oh, these may take a long time to soften.” I checked online and if they are soaked, the Lady Cream Peas should soften in about 30 minutes, so not having soaked them, hoped 1 hour cooking time would get them in shape.

It’s about time for me to add the chopped carrots, celery, and thawed-frozen veggies. I’m also going to add a little green bell pepper, and a can of green beans. *It is important to have just the right blend of tomatoes and other veggies in this soup, and I usually know that by taste. Tomatoes need to be a primary flavor, but some green beans and corn can add to the mix.

I did not add many of the dried Lady Cream Peas to the soup, but they cooked well. I think I would add more of these peas to the next soup, but would probably try to soak them first. I have added Pearled Barley to previous vegetable soups. The Lady Cream Peas are larger than the barley grains, but I think they provide some of the same texture to the final product.

I used the last of the little white skinned potatoes and put them with green beans & some seasoning meat. They turned out pretty well.

I started a pre-soak on some lima beans, putting in both salt and baking soda, and heating the water. Pulled it off the heat and let it sit for several hours.

I knew I wanted to make some more Cranberry beans & chard, so I thought… could I use the water in which I soaked the lima beans to soak the Borlotti beans. I did a google search and the questions & answers weren’t quite on target for the answer for which I was looking. The online answers address if you wanted to use the soaking water to cook the beans in. *I knew you wouldn’t want to do that because the soaking water was probably too salty, and whatever things had leached out of the beans, due to soaking, was what you were wanting to get rid of. And without looking, aren’t those the things that cause flatulence. But, I saw no reason not to try re-using the soaking water, saving it from the limas and putting the Bortolli beans it it to soak. I guess the worst that could happen would be that the baking soda would have been used up.

The butter beans turned out really well. Seasoning meat, some margarine and at the end, adding 5 biscuits as “pastry”. Placed the dough on top and then spooned some of the beans and seasoning meat on top of the pastry. Left it to cook for a while. Came back and the dough had cooked and the pastry had puffed up a little. The beans and pastry turned out to be delicious.

Hours later I drained the Cranberry beans and started to cook them, with some onion and seasoning. The beans seemed to have soaked well, and it took about an hour and a half to finish cooking them. I prepared the chard, onion & garlic for cooking, and cooking these down then adding the Borlotti beans and some chicken stock. It looks good. The taste was subtle, but still savory – “earthy flavored”.

Forgot that I also took a can of beets and “suped” them up by adding some balsamic & red wine vinegar and some sweetener. Drain off the liquid in the can prior to adding the vinegar. Put this in the refrigerator to chill.

So, lunch was limas & pastry, beets, and green beans & potatoes. All good, but my favorites, in order, the limas, the beets and then the green beans & potatoes.

I had bought some small white potatoes at Pate’s Farm Market earlier in the week. They were displayed loosely, and I selected most of them to be the same size. Not sure if I knew what I was going to do with them. One thought had been to fix some potatoes & green beans seasoned with bacon. Done well, the flavors are delightful. *I think it was Essie Davis, at a Bear Creek Senior Citizens luncheon, who brought a delicious dish of greens beans & potatoes seasoned with bacon. I recall that I did not go back for dessert, but for another helping of green beans, potatoes & bacon. The luncheon was held in the old fire station, that had been used for Boy Scout meetings, but now a meeting place for senior citizens. I was probably working for Region P Community Action Agency at the time, and that would have been more than 40 years ago.

I already had some white potatoes at home, but with darker skins, and larger.

Through the years, microwaving a potato, for about 5 minutes, and then cutting it up with margarine, sour cream, some herbs (marjoram, thyme) and S&P was a “go to” for me. I could have it by itself, or as a side with a pork chop or a hamburger. But for several months now, I haven’t had the desire to fix a potato this way. My favorite potato had become the Yukon Gold, but I’m not sure what has happened, but they don’t seem to be in the market (any grocer) any longer. *I took this to be a result of COVID, but haven’t checked. I don’t think I could blame the same on the small, flavorful “Sweet Bites” tomatoes from Sunset (company). But, those too have disappeared from the store shelves.

Maybe a year or so ago, I saw a way to bake a potato giving it a soft center, but a salty, crisp skin. This was on America’s Test Kitchen. The steps. Use Russet potatoes and brine them briefly before baking. I’ve tried this and it does make for a good baked potato.

This afternoon, I took about six of the small white potatoes, and quartered them. I boiled them with a little salt water. I later cut most of the quarters in half. As I was boiling the potatoes, I cooked some bacon in the microwave. For me, currently, this is the way to get consistently good bacon. After four minutes, the bacon is cooked, not overcooked, and crisp. As I am cooking the bacon & boiling the potatoes, I started to cook a couple of “round bone” lamb chops on the stove top. I use both olive oil and some grapeseed oil in the pan, but also added some bacon drippings as they were produced from the microwave. I needed to attend to the doneness of the potatoes because I don’t want them to overcook, nor do I want them undercooked and hard. Once they were done, I drained them and put them in a bowl for a little later.

The bacon finished and I took it out of the microwave. The lamb chops finished and I took them out of the skillet and set them aside in a plastic container, only planning to eat one of these for lunch.

I poured off most of the oil from the skillet and added some finely chopped onion (not a sweet Vidalia onion) to the pan. Not all of the onion was finely chopped. I like enough onion to distinguish it from the other ingredients. I cooked the onion down until it was translucent, but not blackened. I chopped the bacon into bacon bits. I now added some red wine vinegar and sweetener, and Agave Nectar to the skillet and mixed the onions with it. I then poured the potatoes into the pan, along with celery seeds, and added the bacon bits. I mixed the potatoes, onions, vinegar and sweetener in the pan. Tasted, and added a little more Splenda and vinegar to taste. Yes, another good German Potato Salad, but made with the small white potatoes.

I now had a lamb chop and warm German potato salad, and I pulled some rotkohl (Red Cabbage) and some of the Cranberry beans with chard, that I made yesterday out of the refrigerator. I left both of these cold. The flavors and different temperatures worked well together. A little slice of lamb, and some rotkohl. Some potato salad. Some of the beans & chard. Really good flavor. And now mixing and alternating each of these. It was all good, and all good together. *I do think I will make the Cranberry Beans & Chard again. I now think that it is the chard which adds that distinctive, earthy flavor. I plan to try chard in several dishes to see.

I normally would not have potatoes and beans in the same meal, but the two sides above were distinctive enough, and warm & cold, and sweet & savory. The starchy items that I usually would not have during the same meal are potatoes, beans, rice and pasta. All four of those starchy items would be used to “soak up” any gravies or sauces that came with the meat entre.

NOTE: I just thought, those small white potatoes would go well, sliced and mixed with fresh goat cheese and ramps. Ramps have a distinctive flavor, which are as different as garlic is from an onion, and ramps are as potent as garlic. You can’t eat either one without others knowing. Ramps only grow above a certain elevation, in the mountains and at a certain time of year (I think early spring.). I first got them at the State Farmers Market in Asheville, NC.

NOTE [05/26/24]: Tonight is the second time that I have thought to cook a white potato with some water in my microwave “onion” cooker. I think it actually causes the potato to cook more quickly because it is “steaming” it. The cooked potato ends up moist. *I added some salt to the water, but am not sure if it flavored the potato. However, the water was completely cooked off in just 3 minutes. I stuck a fork in the potato and it seemed to be done, but I cooked it for about another 30 seconds. **I didn’t add any margarine or sour cream to the finished potato, but just salt, garlic powder and pepper.

I thought I had bought same Country Crock Margarine Original Flavor from the IGA. I even recall looking at two sizes of the Country Crock in the display. The smaller size was about $5.99 and the larger container was about $7.99. I made a mental note that I didn’t need the larger size, but did think the smaller sized container was smaller than what I usually get. But, it might have been the same size. Still, that I apparently did not put the container in my shopping cart is amazing to me. Still, I didn’t find it in my refrigerator, my kitchen, on my dining table, or anywhere in my car. So, I must not have bought it. This is almost like running out of onions. I cook an onion for most of my meals (at least lunch & dinner), and even saute some to go with my liver mush for breakfast. I ran out of olive oil earlier in the week. This too was unusual.

I am wondering if these “things” I am forgetting, or misplacing, are illustrative of a fading memory, in my old age. And, I am old. I am 70 years old, and that IS old. And, when someone introduces you as “70 years young,” you know that they view you as being “old.” I ran out of lime juice.

I have certain things that I try to make sure I “buy ahead of time,” before running out of them. They include Splenda, chicken broth, garbage bags, and dish washing detergent. I try to drink a little milk every day. I use Half-n-Half regularly for both my coffee and some of the tea I drink. *I have learned to love my “Scottish Tea.” The first time I tried it, I didn’t like the overpowering flavor, but very quickly fell in love with it, and love it with the creamer. The hot teas I like include: Bigelow – Constant Comment / Earl Grey / Raspberry Royal. I have drank Constant Comment and Earl Grey since about 1985. Rick and Linda Bell introduced me to both of these long ago. I think they lived on Brynn Marr Road in Jacksonville, NC at the time. I came to like the Raspberry Royal flavor from a short vacation I was on. I stayed at a Quality Inn in Lynchburg, VA about 2017 and tried this tea (on a whim) as I was checking out one morning. I fell in love with this flavor and ended up buying boxes of it from Amazon.com.

I have a drink that I make almost every day and consume a carafe. I add some cranberry juice and orange juice to a combination of Iced Tea with Lemon and Pomegranate Lemonade flavor packets (added to water) that I get at WalMart.

One of the things I do, is to give Christmas presents of the various things I have tried and liked in that year. I’ve given away the Bigelow Raspberry Royal tea, some Tiger Sauce, and even bought a hand grinder to grind the Indian Long Pepper that I fell in love with a couple of years ago. The Long Pepper is oddly shaped and hard and won’t grind in a regular pepper mill. But freshly ground, the Long Pepper has a pungent pepper flavor and aroma. I’ve given an old style metal vegetable peeler, that serves a double function when peeling a cucumber. It will peel the cucumber, and once done and halved, you can use the opposite end of the peeler to easily scrape out the bitter seeds. I’ve even given one of the plastic microwave onion cookers because you can cook various fruits & veggies quickly in the microwave with it. It will cook an onion, a white or sweet potato, and a apple. But you can also cook an egg in this cooker and it will come out with a rounded edge that will fit in an English Muffin, like an Egg McMuffin. You can even add shredded cheese in this cooker, and the egg will encase the melted cheese inside. [end NOTE]

I like vinegar. I’ve even been known to drink vinegar, but I know I am not the only one. There are vinegars made for drinking. Add a little sweetener to vinegar and you’ve got ‘pickle juice.’

Take several types of beans (e.g. green & yellow wax beans, pinto beans, cannellini, black or navy) add vinegar & sweetener, S&P and you have a good ‘bean salad’. I’ve also added sweet pickles, peppadews, onion, pickled peppers or sweet pepper drops to a bean salad. Any vinegary item should work in a bean salad.

Why do I like German Potato Salad? Could be the vinegar & sweetener that changes everything.

I may have only cooked Rotkol once in my life. Not sure how many times I have eaten it, but I know I like the flavors. Once again it is the vinegar & sweetener that changes everything. But, you also add cloves, an apple & onion. I add onion to almost everything I cook. “Any onion is sweet, once it hits the heat.” Meaning, even a bitter, hot raw onion will sweeten when you begin to cook it. I like pickled onions, and okra.

So, I am fixing Traditional German Rotkohl (Sweet/Sour Red Cabbage) right now. I didn’t realize it took a couple of hours to let it cook down. I did not follow the above recipe closely. I chopped up some red cabbage, some onion, a small apple and added it all to a pot with some chicken stock. I put in some margarine, red wine vinegar, Splenda, Agave Nectar, S&P, a little Worcestershire sauce, ground cloves, and bay leaf. I can already tell from the cooking liquid that I’m going to love this.