I am feeling depressed about sugar snap peas. I waited all winter long – it was an awfully long winter – for this sweet and snappy taste of early summer, but now that the peas have arrived, I don’t think I can afford them. Sugar snaps are selling for, gulp, $9 a pound, or some $4.75 a pint, at the Portland Farmers’ Market. According to MOFGA’s 2014 Organic Price Report, sugar snaps are sold for $4.75 to $9 per pound, though that data came from just four farms. (When asked, and believe me, I asked, the farmers at Portland’s market told me they are laborious to pick. But I saw fiddleheads for as little as $4.99 a pound several weeks back. Given that foraging is required, aren’t those harder to get?)

When sugar snaps and I first struck up an acquaintanceship some 20 years ago at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York, I never bothered to cook them. I bought big bags, de-stringed the pods (which are edible), and munched my way raw through the fleeting season. If I tired of them (rarely), I paired them with hummus or white bean–herb dip. Since then, I’ve gone through a skillet phase – adding the pods to a peanut-oil-slicked pan over high heat with soy sauce, the barest touch of sugar, a smidgen of sesame oil and a scattering of toasted sesame seeds. Just a minute or so and you are eating sugar snaps, which you’ll find sweeten noticeably with the application of heat. These flavors can be varied infinitely, of course. A squeeze of lemon, a pat of butter, some chopped fresh mint. Olive oil, good salt and freshly ground pepper. The addition of halved or sliced radishes. In my experience, radishes and peas adore each other, and they make a handsome pair.

I also toss the sugar snaps – a cross of English (inedible pod) and snow peas (edible pod) – into grain salads and green salads of all sorts, sometimes raw, sometimes steamed, whole or in ½-inch slices. You can roast them and you can pickle them, too, but I rarely get that far before they have given way to zucchini, green beans, cherry tomatoes and other vegetables of high summer. So far this season, though, I am counting my pennies, mournfully, and hoping the sugar snap pea market crashes and the prices drop. – PEGGY GRODINSKY