What I did with overripe snap peas

I was on vacation last week, and even though I picked every last sugar snap pea off of the vines, the vast majority of the crop matured and then over ripened while I was away. On Monday I spent 20 minutes stripping the vines and when I got home dumped a grocery bag full of snap peas on the counter to see the damage. Indeed, at least a third of them were overripe. The shells were far too mature to be pleasantly, so I split one open and tried a pea or two. They were a bit bitter.

This was my first ever successful crop of snap peas, so I just couldn't throw them away. Instead, we decided to make lemonade out of lemons, or in our case, pea purée with basil and Parmesan cheese. I added some olive oil in a bit of salt, and we tossed it with some asiago cheese.

As Mr. food was once want to say, "Oooo, it's so good."

There is no way we'll eat all these peas, so I'm going to try to blanch and freeze the rest. First time trying that too!