It's 9AM

What Would You Add to It?

Chris Lowry

Nov 08, 2023

You have to add salt, she said.

And butter.

Then it tastes like salt and butter.

I nodded.

But I wasn’t convinced.

It tastes like salt and butter and bitter mash.

We were talking about eating peas.

I am not a fan.

She said she was.

But her “recipe” for preparation sounded more like making a new dish than actually eating peas.

Mash them with a fork, add lots of butter, add lots of salt.

I told her I’d rather mash a potato.

She said I needed to broaden my horizons.

Which was close to true.

But if broadening horizons means making one thing taste like something else, are you really getting a bigger view?

Or just dressing it up with so much familiar that it’s not really all that new?

We ate peas growing up.

They were fresh from a garden, hand picked and hand shelled while sitting on a sofa with Mamaw watching Lawrence Welk, or Dance Fever or The Disney Sunday Night Movie.

They were still bitter when she made them, though hers always had a generous dash of pepper in the salt and butter.

Which tells me something.

I’m not a fan of peas.

I’m okay with it.

I can live with the fact that I won’t choose to eat peas for the rest of my life.

Though I know in reality, the rest of my life will not be pea free.

They get mixed in stir fry, and I eat that a lot.

They get added to some salads, and I eat that too.

In this day and in this age, it is hard to live a pea free existence.

They populate the globe in unexpected places.

It would be no easy feat to avoid a plague of peas.

So better to be prepared for the occasions when it happens.

Since I can’t go around armed with salt, pepper, and butter all the time, I was asking for suggestions.

Hot sauce, she said.

Which burns my tongue and kills my taste buds.

A very worthy substitute, except I wouldn’t be able to taste anything else.

And while food is fuel, it is also a taste sensation.

When done right.

I asked for more suggestions.

Hers was not the answer I wanted.

“I’m craving peas now,” she said. “All this talk has given me a taste for it.”

I didn’t point out that she brought it up, that this was a craving of her own making.

I also didn’t want to experiment with one of the world’s worst foods to find out which additional flavor combination would make me tolerate it better.

So I made a declaration.

I’ll never eat peas on purpose again.

Which got me a smirk, and a trip to the store to buy peas and butter to add to that night’s dinner.

We had salt in the cabinet.

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