Grandma’s Recipes: Creamed New Potatoes and Peas

From the 1960s-1980s recipe box of a mid-western grandma.

Ingredients:

12 small new potatoes (about 1 1/2 pounds)

1 package (10 ounces) frozen peas

1 tablespoon flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

1 cup milk

Directions:

Scrub potatoes and remove skin, if desired. Cook in boiling salted water in medium pan for 20 minutes or until tender. Drain. Shake gently in pan over low heat to dry. Keep hot.

Cook peas according to package directions in medium pan.

Sprinkle flour, salt, and pepper over peas.

Stir in milk to pea mixture and cook, stirring constantly until mix thickens slightly and bubbles for three minutes. Spoon and pour mixture over potatoes.

Commentary from a granddaughter: There is no way that one cup milk and one tablespoon of flour is going to be sufficiently creamy enough for the peas and the potatoes, even if “stirring constantly,” which honestly seems a little dramatic. Can’t we just skip the flour/milk and use a condensed soup of some kind? Also, who the heck actually measures salt and pepper? And, this recipe is straight from the American heartland: where’s the butter? But hey, as mid-western recipes go, this one is fun because it’s vegetables but they’re not in a casserole.

A 1960 Birds Eye frozen pea ad. Such fun! (Hey special shout-out here to frozen peas “creamed and served with chicken French toast sandwiches” and the outstanding exhortation to “Cream ‘Em!”) The exclamation points in this ad are doing some heavy lifting.

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