Artichokes and Brussel Sprouts

Cooked Mini-Artichokes

Sometimes it's good just to have a Veggie Night for dinner.  Tonight we had Artichokes and Brussel Sprouts.  I remember the first time I ever had an artichoke.  My mother made a tuna mixture with egg and bread crumbs then stuffed each leaf of the artichoke with as much as would fit (about 1 Tbs.)  She then steamed them for an hour.  She had mayo and melted butter to dip the leaves in.  Talk about delicious.  Just thinking about it makes my mouth water.

I remember the 1st time I tried Brussel Sprouts.  I was in Jr. High.  I remember cleaning them and eating them raw.  I would make an olive loaf sandwich on whole wheat (or brown dyed, back then) or head cheese sandwich (I didn't know what it really was - it just tasted pickle-y to me) and I would have 1 Raw Brussel Sprout, 1 Red Radish, 1 Green Onion with my sandwich.  It was really good, though I didn't think to chop them all up onto my sandwich.

My family loves cooked Brussel Sprouts, even the picky eaters, but they like them well done, so I have to get mine out first.  I like mine very hot but still bright green.  We had one really bad year and it changed the whole way we do Brussel Sprouts.   We were cleaning the sprouts and we had to keep pulling leaves off until there was hardly anything left.  We chopped one in half and looked closely.  There were worms embedded all throughout.  I took them back to the store for a refund.  I had never seen anything like it before in my life.

We have found a few more worm infested batches since then and for a while there we couldn't bear the thought of even dealing with them.  It was a long while before we had the nerve to buy them again. What happened was that +Trader Joe's  started selling them cleaned and cut in half.  So we started on those.  Now we are daring, we buy the big bulk bags from +Sam's Club but now we trim the end off of each Brussel Sprout AND we chop each one in half and inspect! 

Cleaning, Trimming and Chopping the Brussel Sprouts

This batch had about 5 sprouts that were bad.  I just wonder how many times over the years, I have eaten infested Brussel Sprouts.   All that extra protein at no extra charge, eh?

Brussel Sprouts Ready for the 2nd Cooking

 Sometimes +Trader Joe's  has the whole Brussel Sprout stalk.  Beautiful & amazing.  You wash it well (I usually cut it in half to do this because they are too long to fit in my oven) rub olive oil all over it, sprinkle salt, pepper, garlic powder and dried sage and bake it on a cookie sheet at 325 degrees, until tender.  It's very good.