Happy New Year's Noodles

Happy New Year to everyone!
We are enjoying settling back into our house after two full weeks in Minnesota. Our family has begun celebrating our family Christmas on New Year's Day, and I wanted to come up with something that honored the traditional southern black-eyed peas for New Year's. More importantly, we're trying to cook out of our pantry this new year. So, we had a great long-time favorite: Thai Peanut Noodles, enlivened with silly measuring units, green peas, and lima beans.

Thai Peanut Noodles, for those w/out measuring spoons:
1/2 package thin spaghetti (we use only 100% whole wheat)
1/4 cup peanut butter (or just a hugely full big serving spoon)
1 1/2 jiggers soy sauce
1 1/2 jiggers sherry
1 1/2 jiggers tomato paste
1 big tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon chili paste with garlic
juice and zest of one lime (or 1 1/2 jiggers lime juice)
1 jigger olive oil
3-4 cloves garlic, diced or pressed
1 coffeemug full of lima beans, frozen
1 coffeemug full of green peas, frozen
1/2 handful of chopped peanuts (optional)
2 scallions, sliced (0ptional)

1. Heat a pasta pot full of water until it boils. Cook the pasta until it's done. If you want, steam cook the lima beans and peas in a steamer basket on top of the boiling water. This didn't work so well for us, so I ended up dumping the peas and limas in for the last 3 minutes to boil with the pasta. Strain out peas and limas (or if you're lucky, just remove your steamer basket), then save 1/4 cup of pasta water for peanut sauce. Drain spaghetti and return to pot.
2. In a small saucepan, over medium heat, cook garlic for 1 minute in olive oil. Remove from heat.
3. Add all the remaining ingredients for the sauce. Mix well. Return to low heat but do NOT let the sauce boil. (If you do let it boil, the PB separates out, and the soy sauce turns bitter)
4. Dump the peas, limas into the pasta, and toss all of it with the peanut sauce.

Enjoy!