I like shelling fresh peas. Like crochet, knitting, or the task of pitting cherries mentioned in last week’s blog, the repetitive motion of popping open the pods and extracting the green orbs inside helps clear my head.

This was the last week for peas. As the season moves on, I find that although I’m a little disappointed something is ending, I'm excited for the good things ahead—in this case, there soon will be tomatoes and sweet corn.

I prepared the peas simply: a quick blanch and some olive oil, lemon, juice, mint, salt, and pepper. And then I served them on top of baguette slices that were drizzled with olive oil, toasted and smeared with burrata. Yum.

The box contained a new item this week—something I had never eaten before. It was Tah Tsai, which is a spinach mustard green. It looked a bit like baby bok choy but with dark green leaves. I stir fried it with garlic, sprinkling on sesame seeds once it finished cooking. I also made garlic, ginger yellow beans and grilled shrimp for a tasty meal that was full of vegetables.

The fruit portion of the share consisted of apples and black currants. The last time I received black currants, I was a bit stumped. I used them to make a sauce for pork tenderloin. This time, I wanted to try to use them in a dessert. After brainstorming a bit, I decided to riff on an apple turnover recipe and include the black currants.

The result was a pleasantly purple apple filling folded inside flaky puff pastry. I ate them for dessert the same evening I made them, and then the next morning they looked so good, I had another for breakfast as well.

Tune in next week for my annual batch of refrigerator pickles and some interesting information about the Melrose pepper.