New Year, New Sprout

I would have never guessed that Brussels sprouts were favorite pickings for poets.  Linda Lawrence cried, “The mini cabbage will make us gag, that’s only fit for a black bin bag!”  Stuart McLean, writing in brogue as Robert Burns, penned “Some say ye taste like camel droppings, While others think you great” while Robert DeGraff praised his springtime seedlings then mourned their June death by woodchuck in his “Elegy For Brussels Sprouts.”  Sure, some plants inspire poetry – witness Joyce Kilmer’s oak – but a member of the cabbage family?  Perhaps it’s because Brussels sprouts are not so much green but black or white – you either love them or hate them.

But for me there had been a third option.  I loathe to admit it, but up until this fall, I had never eaten a Brussels sprout, so I didn’t know if this crucifer and I were at odds or perfect together.  As a kid, my mother had trouble enough getting me to accept green beans and carrots on my plate, so the poor woman knew better than to push her luck. 

Then I met our Master Gardener Tom, who years ago decided to grow and sample one new vegetable per year.  In this way, he went from being anti-beet to pro-beet.  While getting woozy just thinking of ingesting a beet (they taste like dirt) I suddenly remembered the Brussels sprouts I witnessed, at age 8, in my 4-H leader’s garden.  I was transfixed by the ungainly, towering plants, with weird spatulate leaves and funny knobs up and down the stems.  Maybe this vegetable from “Lost in Space” was not only cool looking, but edible.

Last February, on the advice of another Master Gardener, I went searching for the variety ‘Gustus.’  Just like the closely related cabbage and broccoli, Brussels sprouts are easy to start indoors in April from seed.  After that week of hard frost, I planted them out in late May, begrudging them the ample space (two and a half feet each way) I knew they required.  After supplying some mulch and a handful of fertilizer, I figured I could coast along for the 99 days the sprouts needed for maturity, and I would become a man by eating one.  It was a summer of much rain and little sunshine, not a particularly good vegetable growing season, so I wasn’t banking on a banner harvest. 

God must have wanted me to face this challenge because the plants still grew.  Conventional wisdom says to top the plants in early September to make the sprouts swell.  I did it, and swell they did.  I stalled to Election Day, then asked my wife to cook them up.  Remembering their reputation for inducing flatulence, I was glad my calendar foretold only Zoom meetings the following day.  The sprouts were picked, sliced, and sautéed in olive oil.

Absolutely delicious!  While adding bacon to the mix definitely helped, from now on I will wax poetic o’er the noble sprout.