Let the season’s sweet sugar snap peas shine in this simple mint and pea pasta salad!

Oh hey, it’s me, Chew, emerging from probably a month’s absence from the blog. My summer has been such a whirlwind and I am really in need of a few days of vacation… and by vacation, I mean just being able to have a few days where I have nowhere particular to go at a specific time so I can just sit on the porch and read a book, do some baking, go for the longest run ever, and lie in bed staring at the ceiling daydreaming for a little bit longer.

Even now, it’s 9PM and I should be in bed right now because I need to be up real early tomorrow for my internship, but I know Leung has scheduled this to be published by Saturday, and I cannot be a disappointment, so here I am writing this late in the night (although it’s still bright outside hahahah). I’ve been sticking to a really early sleep schedule for the summer, and it’d seem like it’s a good thing, but instead I’ve just been waking up more and more in the middle of the night. First at around 1am, then around 3:30am, then 4:45am, then 6am, which is when I just wake up cause it’s socially acceptable to; plus, I gotta get myself ready for work anyways so it’s not a bad time to wake up! I’ve also been having really vivid dreams, and sometimes they aren’t very pleasant! I hope it’s not because I’ve moved my workout time from the mornings to late afternoons, right after my work day! Mornings are great, but I feel like I don’t get enough Zzzz’s as it is, so if I wake up at 4am, that isn’t really going to help my wacky sleeping pattern.

Ooohh, but guess what? I’ve been hitting some PB’s on my runs this summer, and I am pretty dang proud! Making me want to relive my road racing days and sign up for the James Cunningham in October. That was my first ever running race I’ve ever done when I was 14, and from then on, I was completely hooked… until all the overuse injuries came. Not fun at all. It was then when my life became “bye bye running, hello swimming!”. Definitely not the same. Swimming laps is nowhere as freeing as running in the trails, and the most daunting part was diving in during those 6AM practices in the winter! Talk about freeeeezing! Brrrrr!

On another note, the other day I tried this new trail and I got lost 3 times! I had to stop by the park map all three times to figure out with fork to follow. Hahahaha, maybe that’s why I get too comfortable with my usual trails cause I know I won’t be “wasting time” trying to find my way back. The worst thing is when you’re timing yourself for that run, and you end up having to stop and stare for a map long enough for your heart rate to slow, and then you gotta start it up again! I don’t know if this pertains to everyone or whether it’s just me, but the faster I get my heart rate up, the faster I run. Warming up is always so slow for me, but once the gears are turning, there’s no turning back and the machine just keeps going! So if I go on 2 runs in one day, my first one is always slower than my second one… kind of funny isn’t it?

I remember my first time running around the track ever was probably when I was in grade one and my mom brought me to this horse race track (I don’t know why I was allowed to run there), and I got lost on the track cause I was a tiny human on a big track and my mom just told me I could run around the track, so I did and I was pretty much just running to try to find my way back to my mom. And the whole time, I remember I was thinking to myself “is this how horses feel? I feel so lost”. I still remember this day so clearly! Soon enough, I ran one loop and found my mom and she was proud I ran the whole loop, and told my dad!

Fast forward, my dad would watch me run on the track (cause after playing in the playground, I would go like “Dad! Can we go to the track and run? Time me please!”) and after the runs, he’d always say “yeah, you need to buy time to catch up with people, so you need to run distance” hahahahah (aka. he was trying to say “sprints ain’t for you kiddo. You’re kinda slow”). So true. I can’t sprint fast at all. Partly because of my slow reaction time, and partly because my muscles need time to be like “ok, we are supposed to be working hard now. time to work hard”, and that realization takes more than 100m. So I don’t run fast, I just run far 😉 As far as my ankle and my shin allows me to! Currently, I am dealing with my right ankle, both of my shins, and my right quad ( I think I strained it last week but it’s so strange because it hurts like crazy until I’m done my run… then it subsides and disappears until the next morning! This cannot be an injury, can it? I have no idea…). I also hate taping my leg, because at this point, I feel like my whole right leg needs to be taped and hahahah can you imagine the ridiculously funny tan lines I’ll get? I can see them already. I see a zebra prancing in the forest.

Okay, I have babbled my way through this blog post, and I need to get to the part where I need to explain why I made this for the blog! It was the peak of sugar snap pea season just a few weeks ago, and my youths and I were harvesting the peas every single day and they were growing like wild fire! Every few days, we’d have giant buckets of sugar snaps and they were so so crispy and sweet! “One for the bucket, one for me” 😉

We make lunch with our harvest on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so they can learn to cook their vegetables and learn to love them too! Cause when they cook it themselves, they gotta eat it! Works every time 😉 We made this pasta salad one day, and I thought it was so delicious (the youths did too, I promise), so I decided to share it with y’all; it’s a perfect summer picnic dish!

Okay, 9:51PM, time to sleep, right after I share this recipe with y’all!