The case of the missing peas

We were pulling out vegetables to go with lunch today—carrot sticks, celery, cherry tomatoes—but we couldn't find the sugar snap peas. I dug through the vegetable drawer and came up with nothing. I combed through the remaining shelves and didn't see that bag of peas anywhere.

"Did you throw them away?" I asked Andrew, who had, with bravery and nobility of knight, cleaned out the fridge this morning.

"I did not," he said.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Because I'm not seeing them."

"I think Rachel was the one who put them away last night," he offered.

"Rachel," I said, turning to her. "Where'd you put them?"

"Just in the fridge," she shrugged.

"They're not there," I said.

"Well, they should be..."

She took over looking but also could not find the peas.


"Maybe I put them in the garage fridge," she wondered, so we sent her out there to look because (a) it's cold out there and nobody wanted to go (b) Andrew was fairly sure they weren't out there because he'd just gone through the contents of the fridge(s).

She did not find them in the garage fridge.

"We'll probably find them in the pantry when they start smelling..." I sighed (because putting peas in the pantry is a much sadder/costlier mistake than putting a bag of iceberg lettuce in the pantry).

"I didn't put them in the pantry!" Rachel insisted. "I know I put them in the fridge!"

"Obviously you didn't though because they're not there!" I said.

Then Miriam walked up and said, "I just thought of one more place to check," and opened the freezer.

There were the peas, frozen solid.

Miriam felt rather superior for having found them while Rachel felt incredibly silly about the whole mess. "Oh...oops," was all she had to say about it.

I felt relieved that the mystery was solved and although we won't get to enjoy them raw (because frozen-and-thawed vegetables never are quite the same) we're planning on an awesome stir-fry in the near future (the very near future since these pea pods weren't blanched before being frozen).