All About Peas!

As a veggie lover, I can always seem to find a way to incorporate root vegetables, legumes, and fresh garden herbs into any dish. Finally, I’ve returned from holidays (which was wonderfully relaxing) and one of the first gatherings that we had was more of an impromptu get-together—a farewell for a couple of our friends commenced as they are relocating to a new area for a big move to Turkey.   

The new year is ideal for embracing changes so I decided to make a plant-based meal (which is typical for us, however not the norm for others) to give a few veggies that often get a bad reputation the spotlight. Peas were one of them and I made a split pea hummus to go along with our homemade mezze feast. Mezze (or Meze) is traditionally Middle Eastern and East Mediterranean, similar to tapas, it’s several small one dish servings. 

This light meal is enjoyed with great conversation and of course, our mezes also generally involve laughter and contentment in abundance.  

Over my holiday, I went through the blog and e-mails collected from FT readers and I noticed many questions about how I know about different traditions, cultures and one was even about how I celebrate certain holidays. Although some of these questions have already been answered if you’ve followed my blog at least in the past 5 years, this year I plan to provide more inspiration and cuisines from places where I grew up and from my cultures. My parents together are of several cultures and since food (both traditional and gourmet) is just as important and much apart of how we express ourselves as my love for fashion, home décor and entertaining I want to show more of that.  

I have been vegetarian/pescatarian now for about 13 years yet it doesn’t deter me from cooking various cuisines for others. It also helps that I have plenty of people around that don’t mind being tasters when it comes to commentary or just filling their bellies. 

As a child, I grew up eating mashed peas but I only liked the way that my mum made mushy peas because it was slightly different and more flavourful than most. Peas are starchy and easy to alter just as potatoes, therefore you can make a multitude of recipes with this vegetable. I used my childhood memory as inspiration to create a split-pea hummus, which not only provides a plentiful amount of nutrients and antioxidants for your body externally and internally, however it’s also a delicious side. View the recipe here.

Hopefully this will give you inspiration to add more peas to your life or at the very least more vegetables.  

Eating your vegetables, namely peas will also give you iron, fibre and keeps your heart healthy due to the high percentage of lutein, a non-provitamin A carotenoid, this means that it’s an antioxidant that protects your cells from oxidation. 

Do you eat peas? What is your favourite vegetable?