How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Brussels Sprout
I’m 29 years old. I have a college degree and a law degree. I have a steady income from a real job. I own a car, a bunch of furniture, and even some art. I’ve been married for nearly eight years.
In short, I am a grown-ass woman.
But I didn’t truly become an adult until I learned to love brussels sprouts.
I was never a picky eater as a kid. Mine was an “eat what’s for dinner” household, and I never ate kids’ meals at restaurants. My parents cooked weird vegetables and spicy curries and brooked no complaints. Nor did I make any. On the contrary, I loved the flavorful food my parents ate. As a baby, my favorite food was beets (as in, “finish your dinner, little Mirah, and then you can have some beets!” No, I’m not joking. This really happened on the regular.)
Unlike most other kids, I didn’t have a whole list of foods I refused to eat. My no-go list had exactly one item: the dreaded brussels sprouts. They had an off-putting texture and weird smell and, in my humble opinion, tasted like ass on toast.
My mom has always loved brussels sprouts, and for years this bizarre preference of hers caused me to seriously question her sanity.
Later on, as someone who loved to cook and eat food of all kinds, my hatred for brussels sprouts was an embarrassment. All my foodie friends said, it’s such an objectively wonderful vegetable! Food bloggers and celebrity chefs gush over it! Did you know brussels sprouts grow on these strange stalks that look like alien life forms? Amazing!! But to me, they still tasted like ass on toast. Expensive, organic ass on toast.
Brussels sprouts were the last frontier of food exploration — my gourmet Holy Grail. And in the last few months, in the year of our lord two-thousand fifteen, I have achieved the impossible.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I am pleased to inform you that brussels sprouts are now my favorite vegetable.
I did not achieve this enlightenment by seeking it out or forcing myself to eat brussels sprouts until I wore down my aversion to them through sheer repetition. Like most profound insights, it came to me both slowly and all at once.
It began with a friend who said she would bring a vegetable to Thanksgiving dinner, and that vegetable turned out to be brussels sprouts. They were delicious, roasted in butter and accompanied by (turkey) bacon. Best possible introduction. I mean, how could you dislike something sprinkled with bacon?
But then, something surprising happened. After that Thanksgiving introduction, the idea of non-disgusting brussels sprouts had been planted in my mind, and it germinated. I kept reading these articles on food blogs about how easy and delicious brussels sprouts are to cook, and after all, I always struggle with eating my veggies in the winter. (In the summer I eat lots of salads, but in the winter it’s all about the pasta.)
So I tried cooking them on my own, the same way my friend had done for Thanksgiving. I trimmed the ends off, cut them in half, and tossed them in olive oil and salt and pepper. Then I roasted them on a sheet pan in the oven for 30 minutes.
OMG YOU GUYS, they were so good! Both soft and crispy, with beautifully caramelized outsides and a wonderful rich flavor. And I suddenly forgot why I had disliked them for all those years. I mean really, what’s not to like?
What a revelation!
When I learned to love the brussels sprout, not only did I clear my last hurdle to foodie bliss, but I learned an important lesson about adulthood.
You never step in the same river twice. The world is not constant — people and circumstances change faster than you can imagine.
You may think you know something or someone, and your like or dislike may feel so strong you can’t imagine it ever changing. But things change — and by things, I don’t just mean the facts on the ground, so to speak. I mean our loves and hates, our understandings and illusions — they change constantly without our noticing it.
There are things that seem like monumental, immutable facts of life, and it turns out they just aren’t. I always thought I was bad with numbers and had neither ability nor interest in business or finance. Now that I’m a lawyer and my job is to understand my clients’ businesses, lo and behold, I find I am not only capable of understanding, but I actually enjoy learning about these things. Did I change, or did the world? Both, of course, and a million tiny slivers in between.
Things change so slowly that the change seems quick. Or so quickly it seems slow — it’s hard to tell.
Just because you detest something — or someone — with every fiber of your being right now, doesn’t mean you can’t come to love it in ten years, or six months, or five minutes. Sometimes someone who’s been obnoxious and uninteresting for decades suddenly says something brilliant, and you have to reevaluate every interaction you’ve ever had with them. (Maybe that someone is you.)
And sometimes, you look at something wrong for years, until one day it’s just clear. Like straining your eyes at an optical illusion game and seeing nothing, getting headache-y and frustrated, until suddenly it snaps into focus. Maybe you turned your head a little, or crossed your eyes, or randomly thought of the sea. A tiny shift in perspective can make a monumental difference.
I hated the taste of brussels sprouts, and I assumed that meant I hated the things and always would. But I’d only ever had them steamed, so I never discovered I love them when they’re roasted. It wasn’t the vegetable’s fault; it was the cooking method I didn’t like.
If you don’t like someone else, or yourself, or the world depresses you or disappoints you, just wait. It may change. It will change. It has changed already, while you’ve been reading.
Actually no, I take that back. Don’t just wait. Do anything but that. Don’t just try — again and again in the exact same way— to force yourself to like what you detest. That’s a sure-fire way to make yourself miserable.
Instead, try a different approach. Test the boundaries, break the rules, cut the Gordian Knot.
