Peas in the pod

When I was a little girl, one of my jobs was shelling peas for supper. My mother would give me the bag of peas and the Corning ware pot with the blue flower on it. I would sit in front of the (black and white) TV and watch Superman (the real one, with George Reeves) and shell the peas, stopping to eat the smallest, sweetest ones. Then I took what peas remained to the kitchen, and fed the shells to my guinea pigs. One time my second-best friend was over when my mom handed me the bag of peas. I plopped down and started shelling. My friend looked at me with widening eyes, and then, after a few minutes, said, "what are those?" It seems she had never seen peas in the pod.

There's been a huge amount of press coverage for Seattle's new Olympic Sculpture Park, but the Seattle Times had a little sidebar article on the café: Cafe fuses taste with a socially responsible menu. It's relatively new territory, trying to apply the same kinds of sustainability principles that you might find in upscale restaurants to a café grab-and-go scenario. They're doing quite well, having spent a lot of time on packaging. But this quote really got me, "...they're moving on to other issues, such as sourcing their own baby carrots to accompany children's sandwiches -- real little carrots with greens on top, pulled from the ground, not the standard commercial versions shaved down from larger vegetables."

Imagine that, carrots with tops!