Finish your vegetables

Food was torture when I was growing up. That’s because my mother was a dreadful cook. Before you assume that I am cruel for talking shit about my dead mother, consider this: she’d be honored to hear herself described that way. In fact, if she were alive, she’d tell you – without a trace of maternal apology – that she did a terrible job with the meals. Cooking for a family, my mother often said, was tedious, and at the dining room table it showed. There were plates of charcoal on the table that were, once you got through the ash, chicken, and when beef was served it was done so in a shallow pool of greasy, sour-smelling blood. I still avoid the red meat aisle at the grocery, not because of animal cruelty issues, but because the sight of what’s in the packages reminds me of what was once on the platters, and it makes me queasy.

Nothing, however, could rival the pure horribleness of the vegetables. I think her approach was to boil everything and then slather it with melted butter, which was poured from a tiny metal measuring cup that had sat on an asbestos burner cover for a half hour or more. For the most part I’ve come to appreciate the trauma foods. I like almost all the leafy greens. I eat as much broccoli and cauliflower and cabbage as possible. I love asparagus.

Which leaves two hold outs. First, there is no way in hell I am ever going to even give sweet potatoes another chance. There are some things that simply are not going to happen in this lifetime, and that is one of them. The second is, of course, Brussels sprouts. Today, I’m sort of thrilled to say that the dread of “the sprouts” is a thing of the past.

About five years ago a woman at the office pulled a plate of little greenies out of the microwave. Those cannot possibly be Brussels sprouts, I thought. I hadn’t seen those things in so long that I’d forgotten they even existed. “These are so good,” the woman said. She speared one with her fork and put the entire thing in her mouth. “Mmmmm….” I felt a strange tickle at the back of my throat and left the room. Then, at about the same time all the cool cooks in Portland started bragging about pork belly as if they’d discovered it themselves, the sprouts began to appear on menus – and on plates – all over town. Sickening, I thought. Then people I actually knew started telling me, with no shame, that they loved them. How can anyone love them? I wondered. In my memory, they tasted, and smelled, like rotten gym socks. I like some manly funk from time to time, but not on the dinner table.

They were pretty at the grocery store. I’d walked down to the QFC one afternoon last week to get some bagels and when I discovered they were out, I thought, well, I am not going home empty handed, so I meandered over to the produce section. I don’t mean to sound silly, but the walk home was sort of emotional. I was wondering what my parents might have had to say had they witnessed this weirdness, and then I got to really missing those two, which is always at least as bad as it sounds and sometimes worse.

Anyhow, in fours I cooked the Brussels sprouts using three different methods. The one I liked best was to cut them in half, peel off the outer layer, and sauté them in olive oil until the cut side is light brown. Then I turned the heat down and covered the pan and let them go for about five minutes. The flavor was something like cabbage blended with cauliflower with a bit of an almond aftertaste, or undertaste. It took me a few tries to actually put one into my mouth, but once I’d accomplished that I was glad I had. I cannot say I love them, but they are pretty good.