You know the drawer. Every Sunday you fill it with green beans, a head of lettuce, maybe a bag of snap peas. By Friday, half of it has gone limp. Some of it goes in the trash.

And the bag of frozen peas in the door? It feels like a backup. It's what you eat when the good stuff runs out...

But that bag may hold as many vitamins as the fresh food you paid more for. Sometimes more. And it may be the easiest fix for a gap you probably have. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that only about 1 adult in 10 eats enough vegetables. Even adults over 51, the group that did best, reached only about 1 in 8.

So today's recipe starts in the freezer.

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You'll need: 2 cups frozen green peas, straight from the bag. Add 3 tablespoons of water, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 6 to 8 fresh mint leaves (or ½ teaspoon dried), a pinch of salt and some black pepper.

Make it: Put the peas and water in a small pot with a lid. Set it on medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes, just until the peas are hot and bright green. Don't thaw them first. Pull the pot off the heat and add the oil, mint, salt and pepper. Mash it with a fork until it's rough, not smooth.

Eat it: Pile it on whole-grain toast. Spoon it next to eggs or fish, or stir it into rice. It keeps 3 days in the fridge.

Simple. But the reason that bag works so well goes back more than a hundred years. Let me explain...

The trick started with a young American named Clarence Birdseye. From 1912 to 1915 he worked as a fur trader in Labrador, in far northern Canada. There, the Inuit people taught him to fish through holes cut in thick ice.

The air out there could drop to 30 or 40 degrees below zero. A fish pulled from the water froze stiff almost at once. Yet when it was thawed and cooked, it still tasted fresh.

That stuck with him. You see, frozen food back home was often mushy and bland. The Labrador fish wasn't. Why?

Speed. A slow freeze grows big, sharp ice crystals. They tear the food's cells open, and the juice runs out when it thaws. A fast freeze makes tiny crystals that leave the cells whole.

So Birdseye spent years building machines that froze food fast. On March 6, 1930, his frozen foods went on sale in stores around Springfield, Massachusetts. Peas were on the list. An ad promised they were "as gloriously green as any you will see next summer."

He died on October 7, 1956. That's 70 years ago yesterday. And his big idea is sitting in your freezer right now...

Here's the thing. A pea doesn't die when it leaves the vine. It keeps breathing and burning its own fuel. Its sugar slowly turns to starch, which is why a pea eaten in the garden tastes so sweet.

And its vitamins start to slip. Vitamin C is the touchy one. Heat, air, light and time all wear it down. Food scientists often track it as a warning sign: if the vitamin C held up, the tougher nutrients usually did as well.

That matters for you. Your body can't make its own vitamin C, and it can't store much. It needs a steady supply, day after day.

Now think about the "fresh" beans in your fridge. They may have been picked days ago, then trucked, stacked and shelved. After that, they sat in your drawer.

Frozen peas take a shorter road. The plants that freeze them often sit close to the fields, so the peas can be frozen within hours of picking. First they get a quick dip in hot water or steam. That short scald, called blanching, shuts down the plant's enzymes, the tiny workers that keep breaking things down. Then comes the fast freeze, and the clock stops.

Of course, the scald costs a little vitamin C up front. The real question is whether that loss beats what a week in the fridge takes...

A team at the University of California, Davis, led by food scientist Diane Barrett, set out to check. They picked eight crops nearby: corn, carrots, broccoli, spinach, peas, green beans, strawberries and blueberries. Each batch was split. Half stayed fresh in the fridge, and half went in the freezer. Then they measured the vitamins over time.

University of California, Davis, 2015: In 5 of the 8 foods, vitamin C came out about even, fresh or frozen. In the other 3, frozen had more. Fresh never won on vitamin C.

Then the University of Georgia ran a two-year study of its own. Its team added a third group. They called it "fresh-stored" produce, kept five days in the fridge, the way most of us shop. In most matchups there was no real difference. But when there was a gap, frozen beat the five-day food more often than the other way around.

And the peas? They were a mixed bag. Vitamin C held even. Two other vitamins ran a bit lower in the frozen bags. So frozen isn't magic. It's just not second best.

Now for the part I won't skip. Both studies were paid for by a frozen food industry group. Barrett has said the group didn't set the rules. She designed the study and read the results herself. Still, you should know who paid.

Both labs measured vitamins in food, not in people. Nobody followed frozen-pea eaters to see if they stayed healthier. And a pea picked from your own garden and eaten that day still wins. No bag beats that.

But few of us are eating peas off the vine in October. We're choosing between a tired bunch in the drawer and a bag frozen at its peak. On those terms, the bag holds its own.

Peas pull more weight than most vegetables. A cooked cup carries about 8 grams of protein and about 7 grams of fiber, plus that vitamin C.

The small splash of water matters too. Vitamin C dissolves in water, so a big pot pulls more of it out. Three tablespoons just steam the peas.

Olive oil helps you take in the vitamins in peas that need fat, not water, to get into your body. And the mint? It wakes up the sweet taste, so a plain bag tastes like spring. That's how a food gets eaten twice a week instead of once a month.

Good frozen peas rattle like gravel. A solid brick, or a coat of frost inside, means the bag likely thawed and froze again. That costs you taste and texture, so pick another bag.

The list should say peas, maybe salt, and that's it. Skip bags with butter or sauce. If you watch your salt, look for "no salt added" on the front.

The peas were already scalded at the plant, so a few minutes of heat is all they need. A bag left to thaw on the counter leaks juice, and some of the vitamin C can go with it.

Birdseye never set out to make a health food. He was chasing a fish that tasted fresh after the deep freeze. But the same fast cold that saved his fish helps hold the vitamin C in a pea.

There's an old rule for good food: familiar, cheap, in season and local. A bag of peas is familiar. It's cheap, too. And it catches the season at its peak, then holds it still.

So clear a spot in your freezer this weekend. Fill it with green. Make the smash on Monday, and see if you ever look at that drawer the same way.