Let there be peas on earth and mindful nomming to men (or something)

Image courtesy of the Stock Exchange

I *love* summer. Don't get me wrong, I love all the seasons, pretty much. But from a healthy-eating, be-good-to-my-body, get-the-nutrients-and-antioxidants-into-myself-in-the-form-the-good-gods-actually-intended viewpoint, nothing beats the cornucopeaia of fruits and veges that become available around the approach to the silly season down here in New Zealand.

One of the things with living in a reasonably small island country that's miles away from pretty much anywhere else, is that we don't get a lot of stuff out of season here. Some stuff from over in Oz, or flown in from the States, sure, but not a lot of it. And that's not necessarily a bad thing - not just from a carbon footprint perspective, but because it means that when a lot of our fruit and veg are in season, we get to enjoy them more *because* we know they're not available all year round.

There are a whole load of summerfruits I rejoice to see on fruit shop shelves.  Strawberries. Rockmelon (what you folks Stateside would call "cantaloupe").  Watermelon. Oh, and cherries - dark, deep-red-almost-black, sweet, succulent cherries - I can't possibly forget those!

But beyond all of that, there's one food that I literally jump up and down, clap my hands and squee like a little kid in a candy shop whenever I see hit the shelves for the first time each year, and that's fresh garden peas. A couple of friends and I even created a goddess of pea pods (called Legumina, but of course), and started coming up with appropriate rituals for her worship. Don't believe me? I have written *proof* from back in 2006!

Part of the reason that I'm completely mad about these little green gems of vegetablehood is that the season for them in New Zealand is incredibly short. Some years we don't see them in until early December, and certainly by mid-to-late January they're always gone.  I think the longest I've ever seen them in season is for about 10 weeks one year - most years it's close to 6-8 weeks.  Which isn't a lot of time to get to spend with  something you're crazy enough about to create a new deity from scratch.  It means that the first day I see peas on the shelves each year becomes a day of informal celebration and initiatory worship of Legumina.

Yesterday, my friends, was such a day. I'd gone into my local fruit shop to pick up some healthy noms to have with my dinner, and there, on the shelves were the first long, green pods of Starfire-ambrosia for 2010. You can bet it was a day of celebration in the Starfireverse.

Interestingly, there seems to have been a bit of a change in the way I'm eating my nommy, nommy peas this year. It's not so much about sitting down with a bag and just munching my way through them now. I've noticed that I'm... noticing more.  The scent and the sound as I pop each pod. The taste differences in my mouth before and after I chew. The texture of each individual, luscious emerald pea as it gives under my teeth. Yeah. I'm eating them mindfully (well, at least a little mindfully, anyway - I probably wouldn't eat the whole bag in one sitting if I was being completely mindful about it. But complete mindfulness is a long-term journey, and I'm happy to recognise a small step in the right direction).  And it wasn't even a conscious choice to do so.  I wonder if that means something about mindfulness is finally sinking down to a subconscious level?

So what delicious fruits and veges are in season where you are?  What are your favourites? And how do you ensure you enjoy them when you eat them?  Enquiring minds want to know!