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You know what I love? Roasted chicken for dinner.
Roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and frozen garden peas. We use a really good quality roasting pan; it’s a one time investment and we use it a lot.
I’d rather have the peas fresh, but it’s not even the middle of April yet so I am content with frozen fresh peas from last year. Our homegrown peas taste much better than those bags of frozen peas at the grocery store.
It’s always a treat when we cook one of our homegrown chicken. Although we part quite a few of the birds out (so we can have packages of breasts or thighs) we always leave several to cook as roasters. Before putting it in the oven, we rub the bird with melted butter then sprinkle it with salt and pepper. It’s especially good with a good sized sprig of Rosemary laid across its body so if you have some, use it.
It’s always so delicious, no matter what time of year we take one from the deep freezer.
We make broth from the juices and use it to make a pot of chicken soup. It’s an inexpensive meal and, coupled with some bread and a salad, it makes a healthy dinner. A nice sized meat bird can feed a family of 4 for 4 meals if you use your imagination. There are lots of recipes that use sliced or diced pieces of chicken.
Meat birds are great! We buy day old Cornish Giants and raise them for 8 weeks. We’re thinking of doing a few birds this year, but we haven’t made a final decision on it. You can read about our raising meat birds here if you like.
Steven says
Annie: For just you and your husband, how many pea plants do you need to grow to produce enough peas to last the year (in frozen form, obviously)?
I agree that there is nothing like fresh or frozen peas from your own garden.
Annie says
We have never been able to grow enough peas to last us all year, but my guess would be around 60 – 75 plants? I could grow all we need, if I only had time. We love garden peas, but the time you have to put in shucking makes it impossible for me to grow enough. So however many we get in the freezer, we hoard them 🙂
And we do have to use grocery store frozen peas. If I make a casserole I wouldn’t waste my garden peas by adding them, so I would use the bought ones. But for meals like a roasted chicken dinner, or even better, venison snitzel, well those HAVE to have garden peas on the plate. It’d be almost sacreligious (sp?) to go any other route.
And I do like snap peas, but not as much as I enjoy shelled peas. Dang, I love those! Are you going to try to grow a year’s supply this year?
Steven says
I would like to try – peas are a big part of our diet. I didn’t have a lot of luck with the peas the first time I tried to grow them. I didn’t realize that you needed to harvest the pods as they mature to encourage the plant to produce more pods, so we ended up with maybe one or two meals at the end of the season and a lot of saved seed for the next year. We were so busy with renovations and property hunting that following season that the peas ended up neglected and produced even less.
I’d say that I had probably only planted 15 – 20 plants. Peas are supposed to be ready to harvest in late spring / early summer but the variety I used took all season. We are going to make preparing some garden spaces on the acreage one of our higher priorities – once the snow finally melts off, that is … 😉
Annie says
I’m curious which variety you used last year, Steven. I plant peas as soon as I can get into the garden, sometimes it’s April, other times it’s May. But yes, as soon as the pods plump up, I start picking. Seems to me that the peas on the lower part of the vine ripen first. Pea pods are also very good at hiding, so be sure to really search your vines for them.
At least you have lots of seed for this coming year 🙂
Steven says
I’ve yet to review my existing seed supply, so I have no idea what I’ve got left right now. I sealed them up in a box for the move and encased that in cling wrap. I’ll have to take a look at it soon, I imagine.
I remember purchasing the pea seeds from Dollarama on their 3 for $1 rack. I think they were the Lincoln variety. According to a seed website, they are ready in 70 days and are heat tolerant. The plants made it through an Edmonton summer, so it sounds about right.
Annie says
I’ve grown Lincolns before and was happy with them. You’ll be spending some nice summer afternoons picking and shucking peas, an awesome job, especially with a cold beer on hand.