brussel sprouts 101

my lesson learned the other day about brussel sprouts... kristin i went grocery shopping at whole foods where we buy 90% of our groceries. the other 9% come from central market & the remaining 1% come from HEB. anyhow, we headed over to central market on the way home & kristin dropped me off to run in & grab three things: chicken, sandwich buns, & brussel sprouts.

the chicken was easy; three ancho marinated breasts & one greek marinated breast. the sandwich buns were even easier, they are already packaged up. the brussel sprouts however were a bit more complicated.

i've never picked up brussel sprouts before. kristin & i share the grocery shopping chore & i don't recall us every buying brussel sprouts. a few weeks ago when we were having dinner at whole foods i grabbed some grilled brussels sprout & they were amazing. then this past weekend while at my parents house my mom made brussel sprouts for dinner. so kristin decided she wanted to make some brussel sprouts too.

the brussel sprouts were easy to find, however, the approach to getting them wasn't so straightforward. they were on this long stalk that i'd never seen before. so thinking that central market is all foodie & all i assume you just start picking the sprouts right off the stalk. so i started picking one sprout at a time - filling up my little baggy all happy & all. then i noticed a couple of ladies looking at me kind of funny, almost giggling. i stopped what i was doing immediately & dialed the girlfriend. "kristin, i think i might be doing something wrong. i'm picking these sprouts off the stalk & some ladies where kind of giggling at me." kristin chuckled & said, "sweetie, you are supposed to grab the entire stalk. when we get home we break off the sprouts - not at the store." well that answered the question about why these ladies were giggling. geez, they could have just helped me out ya know...

anyway, i grabbed the full stalk & made my way to the checkout line as quickly as i could - lesson learned!