Invasion of the Sprout People

We’ve been completely enjoying the fruit of our his gardening labor around this house. We’ve had an abundance of lettuce, spinach, and broccoli so far, and I am tempted daily by budding beauties from Produce Paradise.


Our garden runneth over….

But there is one little glitch.

I’m the one who has to harvest it, and I must do so without an encounter with creatures of the crawling sort… which I know are in there. I know this because when the beds were less dense, I discovered some little green hoppers, and I’m no fool. If the hoppers come, can the crawlers be far behind? No, they can’t.

So I announce my garden arrival by yakking very loudly and kicking the sides of garden boundaries. Then, I take a broom handle and sort of shoosh it in and out of the plant sections, stopping periodically to listen for leaves which keep on dancing after I’ve stopped shoosing. And then, I separate the leaves with that broom handle for further inspection. And then, I pick.

Quickly.

Remind me again why I insisted on this garden…

The system was working fine until last week when I headed out to harvest some spinach and found it completely surrounded by a jungle of leafy green bullies so dense that I thought I was going to need a machete to hack my way through it. It wasn’t bad enough that they were snuffing out my spinach; they had created a broom proof snake haven to boot.

I was miffed.

So I called the husband and tattled on them.

I described the leaves and location, and he said, “I think those are your brussels sprouts.”
As if he had nothing whatsoever to do with them…

OK…technically, he’s right. These are my sprouts… which I requested… because I alone like to eat them. That being the case, it seems to be a disproportionately sized jungle, doesn’t it? Perhaps I should have remembered that I was dealing with a literalist and requested brussels sprout-t-t-t. Singular.

Too late. I will have enough sprouts to feed an army. It’s true. I googled it, and apparently, each one of my 4,726 green bullies will eventually look like this.

I can not possibly eat them all by myself. That’s not good for fellowship.

I can’t freeze them. We aren’t equipped for bulk freezing. We have two freezers, both attached to a refrigerator. And I need room for ice cream. This is southeast Georgia, and I have my priorities…

I can’t even share them. I requested the sprouts for the simple reason that I can rarely find them in the grocery store. And there’s a reason that I can rarely find them in the grocery store; there is no market for them. Again, this is southeast Georgia. On our little piece of the planet, there are three vegetables: okra, butter beans, and sweet corn.

Only the oddballs eat brussels sprouts. I can’t even give them away. I suddenly had a vision of myself, standing out in front of Walmart, holding up a sign next to the “Free Kittens” people.

So my only recourse is to use The Amazing Power of my blog to recruit some more sprout people. I shall begin today with a little tutorial and recipe for Grilled Brussels Sprouts and Vidalias.

So here we go:

* Start with fresh  sprouts of a uniform size.
(Please do not use frozen sprouts and blame  me for tastelessness, people….)

* Trim the yukky leaves and cut off the stems.

* Cut an (X) in the stems…

Actually, I don’t know why you should do this.

I only know that JUNE does this, and therefore I do it too.

*Steam sprouts for 3 minutes (on the stove not in the microwave... and please, do not boil … see step #1 above)

While they are steaming, mix together
*2 tablespoons of olive oil
*1 teaspoon of garlic powder
*1 teaspoon of  Weber's Kick'N Chicken seasoning.

Because that's what I have around my house. Probably any seasoning would be just as good. Dink with this at your leisure.

* Coat the steamed sprouts in the olive oil.
* When cool, alternate on skewers, with chunks of Vidalia onions  (Again, see step # 1 above)

 Grill for 5 minutes on each side 

And they should look like this. Really.... they should. Then toss both veggies in the remaining olive oil and serve.

Seriously… delicious.

Now, can I interest anyone in some brussels sprouts?

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Linking this to Foodie Friday again... although I'm really late to the party. And if you're conspicuously late to a party, it's not all that wise to be the one standing there holding brussels sprouts, is it?

 It's tough being back to work this week.