Are you or are you about to be stuffed? With food, I mean, not just generally in your lives as a whole.
Merry Wotsname, readers, if that’s what day this is. Many people have forgotten the real meaning of Christmas, and so it remains for me to issue this reminder: it’s about sprouts.
Controversial, eh? Recent reports have suggested that Brussels sprouts are no longer featuring on many Xmas dinner plates.
Chips and beans with turkey?
Young persons in particular are insisting on chips and beans with their roast turkey or nut loaf. There have even been reports of macaroni cheese getting in on the act.
These gourmands have my sympathies, but the problem with such an approach is that it makes Xmas dinner seem like just any other day’s fare.
You need to suffer on Christmas Day, to atone for sins indulged in with sherry and chocolate.
You can drown your sprouts
It’s difficult to imagine anyone eating sprouts for pleasure, but it takes all sorts, I suppose.
And, even if you are a normal childish adult, you can drown your sprouts in butter, cheese, bacon or even brown sugar, which I agree is going too far, unless you’re feeding very small children.
Sprouts are actually 86 per cent water but, then again, that’s not my favourite drink either.
Mind you, they say we humans are 60 per cent water, which I’ve never quite accepted.
Surely, we’d hear a lot more sloshing going on inside, and it would come oot our ears when we tilted oor heids?
To cut a cross, or not
Oddly enough, I’ve seen heated debate online about whether or not to cut a cross on the top of your sprouts, as is done traditionally for better cooking through.
But some people say it causes the sprouts to get waterlogged, which is the last thing that they – or we – need.
Nothing worse than a soggy sprout, which is why roasting them might be a better option.
Blame the Romans
Who started this sprout business anyway? Was it Belgians, as the name suggests?
They’re famous for their love of chocolate and chips, so it’s a bit weird that they’ve anything to do with sprouts.
But, actually, as with so many awful curses like roads and plumbing, it’s the Romans we have to blame for sprouts.
Evidence suggests they cultivated at least some kind of forerunner of the beasties, which then spread in a most sinister fashion to northern Europe by the 5th Century.
The creatures as we now know them were cultivated in the 13th Century near Brussels, ensuring the city’s name went down in the annals of culinary infamy.
So why are they a Christmas thing?
You have to bear in mind that, back in 13th Century, folk didn’t have nice comestibles like oven chips or chocolate, but had to eat all sorts of tripe. Including tripe.
You may wonder why sprouts came to be associated with spoiling Christmas, but it’s down to their seasonality: they can grow at relatively low temperatures.
Seasonality isn’t such a thing now, but it tends to hang around still in tradition.
Meanwhile, it’s estimated that, at Xmas, 390,600,001 Brussels sprouts are eaten in Britain.
Will that one be one of yours? Or will you be having the macaroni cheese?
Whatever you have, remember: nothing in moderation. Unless you are actually having the sprout
