"To Pea or Not to Pea..."

When I was living my bachelor-lifestyle, eating out at Panera's more than eating in, my mother gave me several hand-written recipe cards for those moments where I felt both stingy and ambitious. Unfortunately, I don't know if I tried more than one or two of them. Of course, as Caroline and I were married, we combined our recipes and cook books together to form one big happy family.

For months now, Caroline assumed that these recipes from my mother hold special significance, and she was waiting for the perfect opportunity to surprise me with one of my favorite childhood dishes. I can only imagine Caroline's delight in putting two and two together when she realized that, despite how low we were getting on groceries, we had in our fridge and cupboard just the right ingredients for one of my favorite meals!

She even hinted at it earlier in the day. I was in my favorite orange chair typing away on my computer, and she, in passing, said, “I think I'm going to cook a meal that you'll really like tonight. It's one of your mother's recipes—the one with stuffing and eggs and cheese. It sounds so decadent,” and she smiled.

Honestly, I'm ashamed to say, I was rather unimpressed. First of all, I didn't recall ever hearing of such a recipe, and secondly, I was pretty sure that, even though the recipe was written in my mother's handwriting, there was a distinct possibility that it had never before been made by anyone except, perhaps, the person who gave it to my mother.

As we sat down to dinner a couple hours later, Caroline seemed excited. There were two stuffing and egg muffins topped with sharp Vermont cheddar cheese sitting on each of our plates. And there were peas. Lots and lots of peas. (Apparently, when Caroline was wrestling with the bag of frozen peas earlier, some spilled out, falling to the floor, and she figured it would be best to dump the rest into the bowl and cook them all at once.)

Conversation went from bad to worse, as we began vocalizing our thoughts about the meal, and quickly realized that underlying it all was a big misunderstanding. Caroline couldn't understand why I wasn't thrilled to have this particular dish for dinner, and I couldn't understand why Caroline thought that it was thrilling at all. At one point in our meal, in the midst of tears and laughter, and laughter and tears, Caroline got up for a Kleenex, and exclaimed, “This dinner was just not meant to be.” To which I retorted, “This dinner was just not meant to pea.” And we laughed and cried some more.

For the record, the meal wasn't so bad. And it is rather easy to make. I'll try to put the recipe in here so you can try it if you'd like. I think it would be a bit better with bacon.