Janell and the Peas

Ellen and I have a son, Mark, who lives in Denver, CO. He has a fine wife, Janell and two small sons, Willie and Aaron. Mark is very much in love with his wife, and each year he surprises her with a birthday party.

Do you all know the fairy tale about the Princess and the Pea? If not, you should have your children read it to you sometime. Briefly it is about a Princess who couldn't get a good night's sleep even though she was sleeping on 27 mattresses, because there was a small pea under the bottom mattress. Mark decided to put on a dinner theater for the birthday party and the theme is the Princess and the Pea. Everybody who is invited has to participate. If they can't act, they can work on scenery, or cook the food, or clean up afterwards.

Now you must understand that my wife can not stand to be left out of anything. When she heard about the party, she got on the phone and asked Mark what she could do to help. Here we are in Florida, 1500 miles away, and we are going to help throw a party.

You must also understand that my wife has a great imagination. It knows no limits - but she can't make anything. On the other hand, my imagination is zero, but I can make anything. So when she says she is going to make something for the party, what she really means is that she is going to think up something that I am going to make.

She finally agreed with Mark that we would make centerpieces for the party tables. These are going to be little beds to go along with the theme of the party. With a little more imagination, the mattresses for these centerpieces are going to be made out of boxes of frozen peas that you buy at the grocery store.

We bought six boxes of Green Giant frozen peas, one mattress for each table. The first problem was immediately obvious. We have to take the peas out of each box without destroying the box. Green Giant never really thought that anyone would want to do that. In fact, I believe that Green Giant didn't want anyone to even try. They went to great pains to wrap the foil very neatly around the box and glued the ends very tightly down.

Remember now my curse. I can make anything. It became a personal battle between me and each box to open the wrapper and the box, remove the peas, and restore the box to its original condition. To do this, you must ease up the edges of the wrapper, and using a very sharp knife, carefully cut the glue that seals the package. You must be sure that you do not cut the wrapper, only the glue. By a strange coincidence, it takes exactly 27 minutes to open a package of frozen peas this way.

To efficiently use the peas that come out of the package, I used two plastic bags for the peas from each box. That makes 12 bags of peas that went into our freezer. Remember that number, 12 bags of peas.

The centerpieces are not yet done. A bed must have legs. These were made from drinking straws, two short pieces for the foot of each bed and two longer ones for the head. Each one of these centerpieces had now become a spidery construct that had to be packed so the postal service couldn't wreck it on it's journey from Florida to Colorado. I won't even tell you how much the postage cost.

This brings me to the second part of my story. Remember the 12 bags of frozen peas in my refrigerator? The day after we sent the boxes to my son, my wife left on a week's seminar and workshop. What am I going to do with 12 bags of frozen peas? I can't cook. All I do is heat things. Well maybe I can just leave the bags in the refrigerator until my wife comes back.

You know, there are some things that nobody ever tells you. You just learn by accident. For instance, did you know that you can break a small piece off the edge of a chocolate chip cookie and all the calories will fall out? Another thing that I never knew is that if you take frozen peas out of the box and put them back into the refrigerator, they multiply! The day after my wife left, I counted the 12 bags of peas. There were 13! I couldn't believe it, but there they were. Now it became obvious that I couldn't wait for my wife to return. I had to start reducing the number of bags before they overflowed the refrigerator.

This called for some creative thinking, something that I am not expert on. Maybe that is why I tried frozen peas on cold cereal for breakfast. And as a topping for ice cream sundaes. If you put a layer on a slice of bread and put it in the microwave, the peas thaw and you can spread them like jam.

Each day I pulled out two bags of peas. Two from 13 is 11. Two from 11 is 9. Two from 9 is 7. But it doesn't work that way with frozen peas. 11 bags at night is 12 the next morning. When my wife finally got home, we put the rest of the peas in a huge casserole and took it to a church picnic. Luckily, the bowl was empty when we took it home.

By the way, in all the hustle and bustle of the party preparations, Mark forgot to put the centerpieces on the birthday tables.

Author: Eldon Niemann