"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
...
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.


You assume correctly, both okra and cowpeas came from the slave trade.
Gardenders in OZ should consider trying them as both are drought tolerant
and can produce large crops with a minimum of water.

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

Steve Peek wrote:
"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
...
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.


You assume correctly, both okra and cowpeas came from the slave trade.
Gardenders in OZ should consider trying them as both are drought
tolerant and can produce large crops with a minimum of water.


Cowpeas are used in pastures for those reasons but we don't have the custom
of eating them. Okra may be drought tolerant but if you want good fruit for
the table you had better water it. I looove okra.

D

Derald wrote:
songbird wrote:

thanks for the note Derald, next time
save me a bounce and put a real e-mail
addr on there. no, i don't mind the
e-mail at all, but consider it kinda
strange to get an invalid one in return.


snip

i'll be interested in hearing how long they actually
do last for you.
Well, the hardest part of that will be the remembering, LOL! Don't expect
that to get any easier....
snip

do people use the dried cowpeas for cooking too
or are they too yucko for that?

Oh, yes. They're sort of bland because they're too mature. Season them like
any other dried legume or beans 'n rice dish, pretty much. Dried peas and rice
is called, colloquially, "hoppin' John" and traditionally is eaten on New Year's
Day to bring luck. Sort of a cracker version of "Moros y Christianos", a
tradional Cuban black beans and rice dish.

i always thought it was blackeyed peas and collard
greens for good luck?


snip

from what i'm seeing of the blackeyed peas harvest
so far they didn't like all the rain we've had lately.
i'm not a huge fan of them anyways so i'll grow a
much smaller plot next year (as a continuing seed
source, to see how they do with a full season and
they'll be up higher so they won't get flooded).

Well, the common blackeye and pinkeye peas from the seed racks are among
the least flavorful of the cowpeas but all of them are at their best when young.

ok, so i'm getting educated here as i had no
idea there were more than one kind of cowpeas.

i've eaten plenty of blackeyed peas and i don't
consider them bland. they have a pretty distinctive
flavor.

but it also sounds like you're saying i could
eat them at the green pod stage too (not just the
other kind of cowpeas you've mentioned)?


As they mature they quickly become bland and "starchy". Various "crowder" and
"conch" varieties are more productive and more flavorful but are difficult to
find outside the South and becoming more difficult to find down here as creeping
urbanization kills off the "feed 'n seed" stores that catered to local
agriculture. Online, these guys have about the best selection of cowpeas (they
call'em "southern peas") that I've found:
http://www.southernexposure.com/index.php.

ok, thanks, i'll have to check 'em out sometime
when i'm back on-line.


songbird

Derald wrote:
songbird wrote:


....all is cool, thanks for the note...


snip

i always thought it was blackeyed peas and collard
greens for good luck?
Yep; that, too.

ok, good to know we weren't talking about
different things and meaning the same or the
same things and meaning different, if you
get my drift. haha.


snip

but it also sounds like you're saying i could
eat them at the green pod stage too (not just the
other kind of cowpeas you've mentioned)?

Oh, yes. When they're still immature enough to break easily, they're tender
enough to eat in the pod. Some varieties stay tender for longer than others but
I don't know of any that aren't edible in the pods at some stage. Called, oddly
enough, "snaps", they're most often added to shelled peas (as is okra, too,
BTW). There may be another photo in your future....

ok, i'll give them a shot again next year
and see if i like them enough. or the cowpeas
too. depends if i can find them again.


In The Garden:
This morning: Trellised cucumbers, pruned jalapeño peppers, trimmed
tarragon; yellow squash, bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, tomatoes all blooming.
Month-old Little Marvel peas got their mustard greens planted yesterday; 10-2
Little Marvel peas 90% up this morning; 9-30 collards up yesterday; 9-27
"Provider" beans all sprouted around Oct.1 and off to the races. I'm delinquent
in planting turnips but we're just now having a little of what passes for "fall"
weather down here so it's easy enough to rationalize not having planted them in
September so that's what I'll do: Rationalize, that is. The cowpeas (pinkeye
purple hull) continue to bear heavily.

all sounds wonderfully great, to be out in the
gardens. other than picking dry beans here or
there and a little odd weeding yesterday morning
after burying the raccoon i've not gotten out
in the gardens enough the past few weeks.

i finally finished staining the house so
i'm taking Saturday off. the weather being so
nice i'll be outside doing something, but won't
promise what or when.

picked a few more pounds of pintos and other
mixed beans yesterday in between rounds of
staining. needed to give my neck and back a
break from looking up. very therapeutic.
must get out and get those peas picked now
as there should be some ready. they're
blooming like crazy now. everbearing
strawberries still blooming too, not ready
to quit yet.

leaves are turning, the trees are getting
nekid again. the white pines are shedding to
get ready for the winter.


songbird

Derald wrote:
songbird wrote:

all sounds wonderfully great, to be out in the
gardens. other than picking dry beans here or
there and a little odd weeding yesterday morning
after burying the raccoon i've not gotten out
in the gardens enough the past few weeks.

Hey, if you spend much time "weeding", your stuff just might be too far
apart! (-;

no, just filling in the bare spot out back that
will get overgrown by hollyhocks, sow thistle or
grasses if i don't weed it. the strawberries
are still filling it in and it needs a lot more
mulch to reduce the weed sproutings. it is
about 700sq ft -- i don't have that much mulch
materials available.


Must be the burying season: I've been trying to discourage a duo of
juvenile opossums and discovered one of them dead under the front porch Tuesday
AM.

they do more damage to the bird population than
raccoons do. they are always around here. i don't
even try to discourage them as they are what i catch
when i put out the live trap to get the raccoons.


snip

leaves are turning, the trees are getting
nekid again. the white pines are shedding to
get ready for the winter.

That doesn't happen here. We have few deciduous trees and those aren't at
all showey. They're still quite clothed and some are likely to remain so until
late November or December, depending on when temps drop. A few of them shade the
garden during the mornings but I'd rather live with that than without the trees.
Noticed some radishes this morning that appear to have germinated a few
days ago. Time to plant more. I don't eat the nasty little things but keep a few
growing during the cool season for DW.

the pine tree only drops some of the needles.
all deciduous trees are to the N or NE along
that edge and that is a good place for them
the winds come out of the S or SW most of the
time.

if i were in the south i'm sure we'd want the
shade trees too. a few hours less of sunlight
here or there would not be a major loss. i'd
probably live in a hobbit hole.

our radishes grew in three stages and looked like
snowmen when we finally pulled them out, about 8-10
inches long. no idea they'd get that big. great
ground cover or cover crop with the big leaves. won't
likely grow them again though. rather use the space
for things we do eat.


songbird

In article ,
Derald wrote:

Great God Almighty, I've misspelled "Vegemite"! I'll swear, only an American
would misspell vegemite....

An embarrassment to single malt drinkers everywhere.
--
- Billy
Both the House and Senate budget plan would have cut Social Security and Medicare, while cutting taxes on the wealthy.

Kucinich noted that none of the government programs targeted for
elimination or severe cutback in House Republican spending plans
"appeared on the GAO's list of government programs at high risk of
waste, fraud and abuse."
http://www.politifact.com/ohio/state...is-kucinich/re
p-dennis-kucinich-says-gop-budget-cuts-dont-targ/

[W]e have the situation with the deficit and the debt and spending and jobs. And it's not that difficult to get out of it. The first thing you do is you get rid of corporate welfare. That's hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The second is you tax corporations so that they don't get away with no taxation.
- Ralph Nader
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/19/ralph_naders_solution_to_debt_crisis