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At the last family reunion, my mother and I were in charge of making all the food. We spent 3 days getting all of the groceries, and stacked fruits and vegetables in the family room, filled the bathtub with ice to keep the meat, and stacked the drinks in the garage.

We fried the meat, boiled the noodles, mixed the salad, and cooked the chili. The entire counter and range were covered in pots and pans. Most of the intermediate cookware had been rinsed and was in the process of going through the dish cycle while we were setting tables out in the yard, when my Mom realized she hadn't made any red pea soup. Her brother was flying in from the island for the occasion and she knew it was his favorite. The bag of peas had hid under a couch pillow, and we missed it while making the rest of the meal.

We didn't have enough time to wait for the cleaning cycle to finish, so I dumped out a shallow stainless steel flower vase and put that over the flame. There was no time to soak the peas, so my mom just mixed them raw with the broth, yams, carrots, milk, and spices, and then transferred them to a clean bowl once the cycle was complete. The soup didn't look right, though. The peas and broth are supposed to have a full ruddy color, but the result was a much darker red like a beet.

When uncle arrived he was really pleased to see we'd kept him in mind, but after the event was over and everyone had gone home, we found a pile of wet peas dumped behind some bushes. I learned a very important lesson that day: Those who make peas full-red solution in posse bowl, make violet-red solution inedible.