Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Starring: brussels sprouts, RantMom, RantWoman and RantWoman's home tech support services, miscellaneous kitchen equipment, and idiosyncratic interactions with the world-wide web and the general culinary milieu.

RantMom was holding forth this morning about a roasted vegetable dish she was served with a cafe lunch special The Roasted Vegetable ensemble included brussels sprouts, rutabagas, turnips, and RantWoman thinks carrots. RantMom opined that she really did not see the point of roasting brussels sprouts. RantWoman thinks roasted brussels sprouts sound GOOD but RantWoman conceded that it probably would not have occurred to her to try that combination together.

The conversation digressed for a bit about roasted root vegetables; RantWoman is aware from some friends of Finnish extraction that there is a famous Finnish dish involving carrots, rutabagas, maybe nutmeg and cream or butter. In general RantWoman would probably rather roast the turnips and rutabagas separately, not just dump them into stew as RantMom was formerly wont to do. The conversation could have digressed further about purchase of a custom vegetable roaster, but, sorry marketers, RantWoman and RantMom both being of modest circumstances, we like as not would just use the broiler pan or another decent baking pan.

But back to brussels sprouts: RantWoman and RantMom both like brussels sprouts fine just steamed with maybe a little salt, pepper, possibly lemon juice if desired. RantWoman even recently steamed up her latest brussels sprout supply just like this for an afternoon snack. RantWoman also recently heard a guest on The Splendid Table talking about pickled brussels sprouts with a hint of mustard. Maybe RantWoman will go dig up that recipe; maybe not.

Here we come to various realities of the Rants' lives: RantMom gets a lot of recipes from printed editions of the newspapers. This is, cough, increasingly difficult as the economics of printed newspapers go way south and RantMom also was forced to cancel her subscription. RantMom also shops the remainder racks and sometimes gets cookbooks, but actually setting foot in a real bookstore MIGHT be just too much temptation for RantMom.

RantWoman knows the public library also has lots of cookbooks. RantWoman suspects that RantMom could use a little cheerleading about interacting with one of several easily accessible branches of the Seattle Public Library . However, besides RantWoman's lately acquired difficulty reading most cookbooks, the other problem about checking out cookbooks is that actually using checked out cookbooks is conceivably incompatible with anything in RantMom's or RantWoman's order of messmaking while cooking.

(We further digress: there exist large print cookbooks. RantWoman can usually read them, but they offer nowhere near the variety of the mainstream cookbook market. There also exist Braille cookbooks, assuming RantWoman wants to give her halting Braille-reading skills a workout, but these suffer from the same problem as the large-print selection, Braille cookbooks embossed on paper suffer the same durability in a kitchen environment problems as printed library books, but at least they belong to the cook...)

Enter the Internet, the search bar, assistive technology and sundry related issues. For instance RantMom is using an outdated, quite underpowered machine with a relic of an operating system. RantWoman is not a fairy godmother on the system replacement front. RantWoman sometimes does cheerleader sessions telling RantMom what to look for on the screen and what to do once she finds it. Anyone who thinks this sounds easy should put on a blindfold and try it with your own parents.

Sometimes RantMom needs to call tech support for something or other. RantWoman in fact encourages her to do this since RantWoman considers "user-friendly liveware" part of what one pays for with the DSL bill. Outsourcing tech support to places where the local English vernacular would best be called foreign grad student is all the rage. RantMom is mostly proud her offspring have spent a lot of time in the company of imported educational consumers, but RantMom herself is just not so flexible about capacity to comprehend the worldwide phonetic and philological stew that is modern English.

RantMom usually makes it through just a couple rounds of eccentric accents and hold menu hell. Then she calls up RantWoman with an offer of bribery, say homemade soup in exchange for English-to-English interpretation and futzing.

The most recent round of all this had to occur because RantMom's DSL decided to exit for some unknown reason, so there was not even any search bar for RantMom to be challenged by. RantWoman thinks RantMom tends to do pretty well if someone emails her a link. Sometimes RantMom will even remember there is a search bar to help her find things on a website. Most of the time though, RantMom would definitely rather interact by phone and leave the searching to RantWoman, who of course cannot Google at top speed because it all gets fed through the screen reader.

Take our Brussels sprouts which RantWoman actually meant to editorialize about a bit before posting but now will simply be content to proofread properly.


http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Baked-Brussels-Sprouts/Detail.aspx


http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Brussels-Sprouts-in-Mustard-Sauce/Detail.aspx


http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Brussels-Sprouts-and-Chestnuts/Detail.aspx


http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Brussels-Sprouts-Supreme/Detail.aspx


http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Brussels-Sprouts-Salad/Detail.aspx

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Browned-Brussels-Sprouts-with-Orange-and-Walnuts/Detail.aspx

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Brussels-Sprouts-Stir-Fry/Detail.aspx


All these variations, the online recipes wind up being like a figured bass in Baroque music: we look at the concepts and then just adapt to our tastes. For instance RantWoman and RantMom know how to make a cheese sauce we like. Red Peppers and potatoes sound like good things to combine with brussels sprouts; so do blue cheese and a variety of nuts. NO matter what Julia Childs says about butter, there just is NOT going to be much of it in RantMom's kitchen and olive oil will roast fine, thank you very much! And so on....