Life: an adventure, a journey with Jesus!

Habas vs. Peas

As you know, we are on a journey with Jesus – beyond our imagination. This journey includes all aspects of living in a foreign country, even new experiences in the kitchen. Just thought I'd share a recent experience with you. Nothing profound. Don't get excited. Just read on for an interesting break in your day. We often send our family and monthly partners emails with tidbits about life. These are usually not worth blogging or sending out in our monthly newsletter. So, for those of you who have already read this, let me say that I’ve updated it a little, so enjoy rereading about habas vs. peas.

We were at the mercado and when purchasing some vegetables Don saw the green pods and suggested we get some peas, he would shell them and it would be a nice change. No problem. After all, you can't buy frozen or canned veggies, so we haven't had peas here at home since we arrived! We got home and he sat down to shell the peas and found the pods were tough. I mean they were really tough and once he got one open, oh my gosh, these were not peas, but the size of the bean was huge. It was bigger than a lima bean. So, I headed to the internet and found out they were habas. I had seen them on my dinner plate one day at a friend’s house, but didn't know how to tackle them and I thought I heard them called habas so that was my lead.

Well, habas they were. After getting one pod open, we found a beautiful (really, it was beautiful!) lush, velvety lining to the pod that these huge green beans were nestled in. Don continued to struggle getting the pods open, and removing the beans to a separate bowl, while I read what I could find on the internet. Guess what? Well, if you are familiar with habas, you'll know what's next. After getting the pod open and removing the beans, you have to cook those beans for 6 minutes, drop them in ice water and remove their skins. So, there's more than one step to cooking these things. Don agreed to shelling them, so the rest was up to me. I followed the instructions on line and soon had the beans ready for cooking in a recipe. They were a very pretty, bright green color. Seriously, this was an interesting experience in the kitchen!

Before I move onto the final cooking stage, let’s look back at these habas. The pods are pretty ugly. They have brown spots on them, and remember I said they were tough to open. Well, here I am a day later thinking about these habas and it dawned on me that they were like our lives. We can be pretty tough skinned. We can be pretty ugly at times. And, now that we are older, we certainly are not as physically attractive as we may have once been. Don’t stop reading here. I also said that once Don got a pod open, he found a beautiful, lush, velvety lining. There inside that protected area, the bean with it’s skin lie. So, maybe once you get through my outside and see the inside you will find a person who isn’t so bad after all. After you read the next paragraph you’ll see that once the habas were cooked according to directions, they were delicious. Hopefully one will find me to be palatable as well!

The recipe on line suggested stir frying them in a little oil with onion and chopped ham. Well, I looked for another recipe, since ham is non-existent in our neck of the woods. Couldn't find an 'easy' one, so I substituted a pork chop (which I chopped/diced) and voila! the dish was soon ready, delicious and now I know what habas look like and taste like. Something we would definitely enjoy again, but the three step preparation you have to be ready for!