Watch out Wasabi or The Princess and Her Pea

I went to Sunflower Farmers' Market the other day. It's a new store in Murray with many healthy options. There are some great prices on fresh fruits and vegetables and some not so great prices on other boxed organic type stuff. One of my favorite snack items I normally buy at Target is their bag of cashews and cranberries, and then a bag of their almonds and blueberries and mix them together. Well, at Sunflower market they had all of these items for sale individually so I bought a container of whole unsalted raw cashews, one of whole raw almonds, another of dried blueberries, and finally, one of dried cranberries. I mixed all of them into one large container and these have been a delicious, sweet, crunchy snack all week long. It cost about as much as the two bags at Target but I got twice the amount and a whole lot more blueberries.

The other the thing I bought was a container of wasabi peas. Now I've had wasabi before and I've had dried peas before but I've never had them together. They seem to be all the rage and I've heard mention of them in several different instances in several different situations so I thought I'd jump on this bandwagon and try them out.

When I got home I tentatively popped a pea into my mouth. What followed was an intense tingle then a somewhat satisfying crunch. It was not unlike eating a sour patch kid, at first they're sour, but then they're sweet. The peas were definitely not sweet or sour but more like a painful pleasure kind of vibe. I still wasn't sure how I felt about them so I sampled a few more. I can see how these can be a little addictive. I was leisurely snacking away when apparently I got bored with the project and rather than eating them one at a time I got a little more adventurous and played around with two or three. Let's just say the pleasure to pain ratio was definitely starting to lean more towards the painful side. Finally, I decided I needed to be done with them and scooped the last handful of about eight or nine peas, no - not directly into the package but, perfectly into my mouth. What followed was the most intense nostril fire I have ever experienced. It was like in Back Draft. When I closed my mouth a bit of a vaccuum was created and the fire needed to escape somewhere. Where? I was to stunned to open my mouth and spit the peas out. No, the only exit was via the nasal cavity. I no longer have any nostril hair and my nose ran for the next two hours but all-in-all I'd buy the peas again. I'll consider their purchase a diet technique. Eating only one pea at a time can have it's benefits. Maybe that's why the Asian gymnasts were so tiny, that, and the fact that they were twelve.