Monday, May 01, 2006
Woe is the Brussels sprout
I am a sad, sad case. Children hate me; moms overcook and under-season. Jean-Claude Van Damme aside, I am the muscles from Brussels: the petite sprout with a big heart, flavor to spare and a nutty zing that could make you want a double order. But, many will never know me. Many fear the unique and interesting that they do not understand. Am I doomed to being misunderstood? I fortify and enrich the mind, body and soul with my vitamins. But why, then, am I so disliked?
People don’t understand what it’s like to be passed over at the market. When was the last time someone walked by you and snatched up a head of iceberg lettuce, eagerly paying outlandish prices for something so devoid of nutritional value. Lettuce, that will only hydrate you with its one-dimensional flavor.
They don’t know how they make me feel when they scrunch up their noses at that sulfuric smell. It’s not my fault your mom overcooked me! Chalk that up to not knowing how I like to be prepared. But then, she always wears that ill-fitting tapered pantsuit, too. Just as you cannot blame her for not knowing the Dress Barn sale was a mistake, I shouldn’t be blamed for her not knowing what suits me. I feel their disdain. I know what they’re thinking.
Is it that I’m not big? I’m robust in flavor, that has to count for something. I pack a wallop inside my pretty little head. I’m concise. I bring you complexities and insights that you just don’t see in the behemoth cabbage. My essence is concentrated, real, intense and something you’re not going to find in a larger head.
So maybe there aren’t any Brussels Sprout kids. I didn’t want a doll named after me anyway. What does Xavier Roberts know about good vegetables, I ask you? I doubt he’d know a good stir-fried sprout if it bit him in the cabbage patch.
But this is all going to change. I know that I’m being discovered bit by bit each day. I don’t need a PR firm’s help. I don’t need to bend spinach’s ear to find out how it ended up on every chain restaurant’s salad menu. I certainly don’t have to ask a Yukon Gold rep how it managed to scribble the russet off so many foodies’ shopping lists. All I need to do is continue to wait as chef after chef tries me out. Maybe stir-fried on a bed of mustard greens, maybe with some pine nuts, garlic and vinegar. Whatever the “experiment” of the house, I will soon become the specialty. I have faith.
Children may never enjoy me. I’m sure your mom will never learn the secret. But as the young grow into food snobs, they will develop an affinity for my smooth, nuttiness. The Shake n’ Bakin’ ladies of yesterday will fall to the might of the pan-searing women of tomorrow. The Brussels sprout will win, one taste bud at a time.
People don’t understand what it’s like to be passed over at the market. When was the last time someone walked by you and snatched up a head of iceberg lettuce, eagerly paying outlandish prices for something so devoid of nutritional value. Lettuce, that will only hydrate you with its one-dimensional flavor.
They don’t know how they make me feel when they scrunch up their noses at that sulfuric smell. It’s not my fault your mom overcooked me! Chalk that up to not knowing how I like to be prepared. But then, she always wears that ill-fitting tapered pantsuit, too. Just as you cannot blame her for not knowing the Dress Barn sale was a mistake, I shouldn’t be blamed for her not knowing what suits me. I feel their disdain. I know what they’re thinking.
Is it that I’m not big? I’m robust in flavor, that has to count for something. I pack a wallop inside my pretty little head. I’m concise. I bring you complexities and insights that you just don’t see in the behemoth cabbage. My essence is concentrated, real, intense and something you’re not going to find in a larger head.
So maybe there aren’t any Brussels Sprout kids. I didn’t want a doll named after me anyway. What does Xavier Roberts know about good vegetables, I ask you? I doubt he’d know a good stir-fried sprout if it bit him in the cabbage patch.
But this is all going to change. I know that I’m being discovered bit by bit each day. I don’t need a PR firm’s help. I don’t need to bend spinach’s ear to find out how it ended up on every chain restaurant’s salad menu. I certainly don’t have to ask a Yukon Gold rep how it managed to scribble the russet off so many foodies’ shopping lists. All I need to do is continue to wait as chef after chef tries me out. Maybe stir-fried on a bed of mustard greens, maybe with some pine nuts, garlic and vinegar. Whatever the “experiment” of the house, I will soon become the specialty. I have faith.
Children may never enjoy me. I’m sure your mom will never learn the secret. But as the young grow into food snobs, they will develop an affinity for my smooth, nuttiness. The Shake n’ Bakin’ ladies of yesterday will fall to the might of the pan-searing women of tomorrow. The Brussels sprout will win, one taste bud at a time.
