Odious

A few Christmases back, thanks to an online grocery shopping malfunction, I ended up with 3 kilograms of Brussels sprouts. Why in the name of all things sane and logical I was ordering even one single Brussels sprout eludes my memory. I can only think I got carried away by all the subliminal advertising messages of the season...

MUST GET BRUSSELS SPROUTS....CHRISTMAS IS NOT CHRISTMAS WITHOUT SATAN’S GREEN BALLS.

No one in my family eats them...so come Boxing Day, I was faced with a wheelbarrow load of sprouts...some cooked, some not, some half chewed and spat out. Tempting as it was to dump the whole ugly lot, my conscience pricked...people are starving, dontchaknow? And you’re throwing food out! As I was not in possession of the postal codes of the ravenous masses and therefore could not ship the nutritious little bundles of joy to the Blessed Hungry, I was going to have to come up with a plan....

[Tada, drum roll, fanfare, etc.]

Disguise them as something edible! I cooked up cauldrons of beef stew and vegetable soup, popping the offending articles into the pots when I hoped my taste buds weren’t looking. Good in theory, piss poor in practice....nothing on this earth can blanket out the rank nastiness that is a Brussels sprout.

The end result: foul tasting stew and even fouler soup, both completely inedible. So, instead of consigning a few dodgy veggies to the compost heap, I now had to dispose of several kilograms of stew and a vat of soup....and invest in some heavy duty air fresheners to take care of the pungent odours that filled the house.

Nat's Ode To Brussels Sprouts

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways

I loathe to spy thee lying on my plate

All small and green and round

I detest thee, soggy vegetable

I abhor thy sulphur scent

Boiled or roasted, steamed or fried

I hate thee for thou bitter taste

It makes me gag and twist my face

And later I hate thou even more

When two hours on, the air turns poor.

OK, poetry is not my strong point. But why do I hate Brussels sprouts so much? According to reliable sources, a gene that modern humans share with Neanderthals makes some people super-tasters of a bitter chemical called phenylthiocarbamide (PTC). Substances similar to PTC confer the tart taste to Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cabbage, and, as they are also present in some poisonous plants, having distaste for them makes evolutionary sense. For those of you that love the little devils, Go Ape!