Derald wrote:
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

I don't understand how the growing and eating qualities of pea
cultivars is off topic for rec.gardens.edible or was two sentences
about cooking old peas too much?
Growing them and cooking them do seem complementary but, hey, playing
topic police may be the high point of his day and if that's all it
takes to make little stevie feel useful, well, let him have at it,
say I. I'm grateful to have contributed to another's sense of self
worth. Truth is, I had thought to suggest that perhaps the thread had
drifted a bit but Nanny beat me to it.
Are "southern peas" , AKA cowpeas, cultivated in your neck of the
woods?

Yes, they are usually used as stock feed and/or green manure not human food.
We miss out on a number of cuisines and types of ingredients that are common
in the USA. I dare say the converse is also true. There is no customary
way to cook cowpeas so either you have to go it alone from recipe books or
pay big money in a big city restaurant where some chef has 'discovered' some
cuisine that uses them.

Oz has undergone a food revolution in the last 50 years and there is no sign
of it abating. Some vegetables such as okra have gone through an adoption
process and are now not so rare here, so you can get them in better grocers
and ordinary people like me grow them. Okra appears to have originated from
Africa and arrived in the US with the slave trade. I guess cowpeas did the
same. So maybe we will be eating cowpeas in years to come.

I haven't taken time to play with them as I don't especially need a legume
to improve my soil and many legumes (eg standard peas , broad beans etc) use
up resources to grow large amounts of greenery for a small edible crop and
they take time to prepare. I don't find the calories available or the
flavour worth the trouble in many cases. If I am wrong about the wonderous
taste of cowpeas tell me about it.


David