This is the thing about the great big wonderful world of blogs– are you listening? Blogs can open you up to a whole great big wonderful world!

Yesterday I was over at No Recipes. He posted a delicious and very Marc looking Aloo Gobi, which is an Indian dish of spiced cauliflower with potatoes. Something about it hit me just the right way. So I decided right then that I would make it for lunch– immediately.

This is not the type of thing I usually cook. In fact this is the kind of thing I usually reserve for restaurants. It’s not that I can’t cook food like this. I just proved (at least to myself) that I can. But for some reason I just don’t… but I guess that is a question between my pantry and me.

Speaking of my pantry, my pantry gets a lot of the credit for the success of today. I keep my pantry in tip-top shape. You never know when it’s going to get a strong work out from a difficult challenger. This Indian spiced dish is a perfect example of the kind of preparedness I am talking about because I was able to read Marc’s post and look at his pictures and start right in on cooking my version with in a few moments. So I am pretty proud of that fact.

Guess what?

I have a lunch date with The Daily Spud. Spud has won prestigious blogger awards. Sup has not. Spud blogs potatoes. So far, Sup has not. Spud will be in San Francisco next week. Sup will too!

We may be doing Vietnamese food. I wonder if Spud knows there are not a lot of potatoes in Bahn Mi! Come to think of it there are not a lot of potatoes in any Vietnamese cooking. Well maybe sweet potatoes (I think…)? But (gasp!) I just thought about something else. What will we talk about?

I don’t know a lot about potatoes. Why do you think I read The Daily Spud in the first place?

Spud is Irish so there is always ale. I can talk about ale, and lager and beer…

But really I should bone up on potatoes, don’t you think. I mean Spud is visiting this country from a land far, far away. Diplomatic proto-call requires I make the alien (err I mean, visitor) feel welcome.

So I am honoring the Irish Spud with a mashed potato recipe! Not just any mashed potatoes either. Green Mashed Potatoes!  Minted Mashed Potatoes & Peas.

Cuz I am still stuck on mint!

It’s happened again. I should have known it was going to happen again. It usually happens just this way. I am stuck on peas and can’t get off them.

Yesterday I posted a Pea Pasta dish with mint and lemon zest. I used frozen peas and it was delicious, healthy and easy to make. And what I said is true. I think frozen peas are a terrific vegetable. Especially in the type of hurried situation that I was faced with.

But it is spring. There are lots of reasons to be excited about spring. Fresh sweet peas of all varieties are certainly some of these reasons.

As much as I loved my minty orzo with peas, it did not really scratch that springtime itch I sometimes get. That itch can only be scratched with fresh peas.

And I do not just mean sweet English peas. I mean snow peas and sugar peas. Heck I even mean fava beans (which is technically a legume). But because of the favas bright green color I am making it an honorary pea in this recipe for Sweet Pea Ravioli with Rosemary Cream. Click for recipe.

“Hello? Yeah. No. Okay. Yes. Sure. Great. Yeah right! Ok, bye. It was nice talking to you too.”

That’s how this story starts, because that collection of very literate sentences was uttered by me and is just one side of a very brief phone call.

Do you have one of those friends who start every phone conversation as if they had been on the phone with you a half hour already? It’s like they just pick up where they left off when they last spoke to you a week ago.

They could spout off their SS# and give you the combination to the safe without first confirming with whom they are speaking.

But in this instance I was indeed the intended reservoir for the information being conveyed. And believe it or not, the information being conveyed was a party invitation.