Peas in a Pod

I recently bought some sugar snap peas at the farmers market. This was the first time I'd ever bought peas that were not pre-shucked, so I really had no idea what I was doing. I decided that I wasn't quite comfortable cooking them inside the pod yet, so I opted to shuck my small pile of peas and cook them like normal.

Half an hour later...

Talk about pathetic...

I brooded over my wimpy batch of peas next to the hulking pile of leftover pods. This isn't even one serving of peas, I thought. Nonetheless, I dumped my little mound into a pot of boiling water and prayed they would grow to a respectable size after absorbing some water.

Nope. Not really any bigger.

So apparently, these were not magic peas that would double in size with a little water. Despite this, I buttered and seasoned them up and ate them just the same. They were delicious, but there just wasn't much to them.

A few days later I found myself back at the market picking up another pint of peas, this time determined to cook and eat them in the pods. About a week later I bought some more peas and when I put them in the fridge, I realized I had not yet prepared or eaten the last batch I'd bought. So I immediately pulled the old batch out and got to work. Again, I wimped out and decided to shuck them, but these peas were a little more mature than the first batch (They'd gone through that whole 'potty joke phase' and were now discussing their college plans). As such, I had a much more reasonable portion of peas for an end result, but still only enough for about one person. Seeing as how I'm the only one eating these peas, this is probably for the best. I haven't yet made the most recent batch of peas, but something tells me I'm still going to shuck them.

I don't know what it is, but I just don't really have a fondness for eating pea pods...It's like eating an orange peel or something. I know I could cook them in a stir-fry and it would look perfectly normal, but I don't really care that much for stir-fry either. If anyone has any other great ideas for eating the pods, please share and I will try it out. Otherwise, I'm shucking them.