Beans (and Peas)

Early this morning, I made my naughty boys go outside and work.  Why were they naughty? Because Ian thought it would be funny to hide in the dark hallway last night and jump out to scare Shane.  They made a ton of noise, right outside the bedrooms where I had just gotten Lula and Daniel settled.  Their job was to pick all the eating-sized beans out of the garden.

They brought in 16 pounds!  I blanched most of them for freezing.  It really is easy.  I just filled our giant stockpot with beans and water, brought them to a boil, drained them, and dumped the hot beans into the kitchen sink that was filled with cold water and an ice block.

After that, I filled up six meals worth of Food Saver bags and shrunk them down for the freezer.  I love the Food Saver.

I also went out and picked every single pea.  Big, small, everything.  I know that I have reached the end of my desire to garden.  Bending over squishes Lucky, so all I can do it sit in the dirt to pick.  The peas never got tied up, so they were crawling all over the ground.  All the big, fat peas got shelled and all the flat peas are going into our Asian noodle salad tonight.  Four pounds of peas equals two meals and over an hour of shelling.  Talk about labor-intensive!

Daniel's bed got moved back into the "nursery" last night per his request (and my delight).  He and Lula stayed awake for a good 15 minutes making funny sounds back and forth to each other.  I was wondering how I was ever going to get my disobedient child and my easy-sleeper to shush and close their eyes.  Easy Lula had an easy solution: I just hung a blanket on the edge of her crib so she couldn't see Daniel.  She rolled over and went to sleep, easy at that.  This afternoon, however, while she was napping, someone offended Daniel and he ran to his bed crying.  Which meant he woke Lula up.  And I got cranky.  He felt bad, so he stayed in his bed until he fell asleep.  And Lula crawled all over him while he slept.  Turn about is fair play!