Childhood Murder of Brussels Sprout

As a child there was a no more despised vegetable in our house than Brussels spouts. They would arrive in our freezer in small frozen boxes and when my mother would dare to prepare them they would be boiled to death and slathered in butter and sour cream. Now don’t get me wrong, butter and sour cream almost could improve anything. Anything, but the poor limp Brussel. The smell would reek up the whole house.

My sisters and I would have that smell preview of what was surly going to be a horrible dinner. We would drag ourselves to dinner where we usually ate without adults since my father did not get hone until we were in or almost in bed. The no adult thing was the only good part on Brussels nights. This meant that I could put a sprout in my mouth and then pretend to wipe my mouth and deposit the sphere into my paper napkin. This trick only worked if you had one or two on your plate. Once you got two I your napkin you could pull off keeping them there while trying to spit a third into it. If a sister caught me not eating my sprouts there was sure to be tatle telling.

Then there was the move of bringing your plate and sprout filled napkin to the garbage to scrape before putting the plate in the dish washer. You had to make sure there was some other food that you could use to cover your napkin in the garbage. It was fine in my family not to eat your potato, but you had to finish your green vegetable. The threat was you would not be able to poop if you didn’t. (The follow up to that lie is for another day.)

Sadly, because of these early exposures to poor Brussels sprout preparation I went years steering clear of them. It was not until I was much older and ate a roasted sprout did I discover that I had been exposed to a murder of sprouts as a child.

Thankfully Russ loves my roasted sprouts and we can enjoy them fully without the need for extra paper napkins and a potato skin to hide them in.