Veggie Rage

Hey everyone, did you know that Chef Boyardee has a full serving of vegetables?

Actually, Ragu does too!

Also providing alternative options for servings of fruits and vegetables are V8 and Fruit2Day.

Thank goodness our national nightmare of having to eat vegetables is over! It's hard to express what a nuisance it is to clean, prepare, cook, and then *actually chew* individual servings of vegetables. Overwhelming even.

Okay, maybe you are getting my sarcasm here, but I have a deep-seated rage against this new trend towards tricking people into consuming vegetables, "hiding" vegetables in other food vehicles, and designating fruit juice as a veggie allowance to get around the challenge of eating vegetables. What it comes down to is that I don't get it. Am I that much of a freak that I really enjoy vegetables? I like them raw, steamed, grilled, sauteed. I like them as a side dish, snack or main meal. I like them on a house and with a mouse... and okay, you get it.

But my point is that vegetables can be such an enormous pleasure precisely because of the variety of options that they afford (as opposed to pasta and sauce, pre-packaged by Ragu and Chef Boyardee, that scream bordeom and monotony to me).

So in order to tackle this "anti-veggie" rage, I will be posting about my veggie love affairs, and I figured why not tackle one of the most maligned veggies first?
Yes, I am talking about Brussels Sprouts!

Brussels Sprouts are a vegetable that when cooked certain ways, can be very unpleasant- mushy, overly bitter, gas-inducing...
However, there are many ways of preparing these sprouts that shine the light on their best qualities. My favorite way to cook them is incredibly simple: Cut in half, toss in olive oil, minced garlic, salt and pepper. Cook in the oven at 400-425 degrees for 40-45 minutes.

It really is that simple; the brussel sprouts I prepared the other night, pictured here, were especially small, and so didn't take as long as the typical 40-45 minutes, but they cooked up delightfully, tender on the inside and crisp on the outside.

I know there are other delicious ways to cook Brussels sprouts; some include blanching them first, which tends to cut down on the "bitter factor" that is usually cited in the case against Brussels sprouts. I also know there are recipes out there that call for sauteeing them in bacon grease, and I promise to execute on that and see how it goes. So, eat your veggies! They are tasty!