Peas

About
Green garden peas are legumes, plants that produce pods enclosing fleshy seeds. Unlike dried legumes such as chick-peas, split peas and most beans that require long cooking times, green peas are packaged and prepared like all fresh green vegetables.

Varieties
Green peas, typically round and sweet, are encased in a large, bulging, grass-green pod that is not very palatable. Fresh peas are in limited supply in produce markets.

Fresh snow peas and sugar snap peas are in greater supply. These edible-pod peas are meant to be eaten - cooked or raw - with the pod intact. Snow peas (also called sugar peas and Chinese pea pods) have pale green flat pods with small, immature-looking peas because they are picked before the seeds have developed in the pod. Probably developed in Holland in the 16th century, snow peas are most familiar in stir-fries. Sugar snaps were created in the 1970s as a cross between the snow pea and green pea. They have plump edible pods filled with extremely sweet and tender peas.

Availability
Fresh green peas have a very limited season: Their peak is April through July, and they are least plentiful from September through December (though California, Florida, and Mexico provide some peas for the market in winter). Snow peas are sold year round in Asian markets; some supermarkets carry them during the period from May to December, when they are most abundant. Fresh sugar snaps have a more limited distribution, but you can buy them at roadside farm stands and farmers' markets in late spring and early summer. Frozen snow peas and sugar snaps are widely available.

Nutrition Information:
• For complete nutritional information, click here.

Additional Information
• Why Eat It - Selection - Storage - Preparation
• From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia