Peas, Beans, Saskatoons, gooseberries, bunched beets, bunched carrots!

You may have been able to tell from the scorching weather right now, but it is most definitely summer. 
Just to cement that fact the local pod peas and green beans have arrived. 

Yesterday while picking peas and beans, 2 workers got heat stroke in the field.  It's slow going picking peas right now, the heat is incredible so clearly we've encouraged our producer to pay their pickers more.  The peas are expensive right now and we make no apologies about it.  There is no amount of money that you could pay me to be bent over in a field for 8 hours right now.  I admire these hard working people. 

So because of their hard work we get the joy of eating fresh peas in the pod which is very exciting!   With this hot weather, shelling peas and eating them raw out of hand is a little bit of heaven.  If you are one of those strange people who actually shell and then cook the peas, please don't over do it.  Just a few minutes steaming or boiling to heat them up will do.  (And really, they are so good raw, why would you cook them?)

The pea season will last an undetermined amount of time.  Peas like neither heat nor too much water and we have been getting both in spades.  The season could last anywhere from 2 weeks to a month, it all depends on the weather.

Green beans!!

The beautiful local green beans arrived today.  Crunchy, a little sweet, and oh so tasty. 
We make sure that all of our beans are hand picked.  Hand picked beans will have a barely visible fuzz on them (in fact if you stick a freshly hand picked bean to your cotton shirt, it will stick to you!) and they should last in your fridge for up to 7 days! 
Mechanically harvesting beans scratches the bean, these scratches rust within a day or two and cause the bean to spoil within 2-4 days after picking.  Though much cheaper than hand picked beans, they are no where near the quality.  That's why we always choose to sell hand picked beans.

Store your beans in your fridge for up to 5-7 days.

To prepare beans
Wash, snip off the stem end, and boil or steam until the beans turn bright green.  I like my veggies to be a little crunchy so I never end up steaming or boiling them for more than 2 minutes.  Some people prefer them a little well done so cook them up for 5-7 minutes.

Freezing beans is easy, just wash, snip the stem end of the bean off, blanch (plunge in boiling water) for 2 minutes, let cool, dry and then pack up in freezer bags sized for your family and chuck into the freezer to eat throughout the winter.