brussel sprouts

Whenever I read about the experiences of others with CSA's, one of the things they are most excited about is that they are exposed to new vegetables. But I've been participating in a CSA for 5 years now and ate a lot of different vegetables before that as well. So I always sigh and think that unfortunately that aspect of the CSA is no longer available to me, my vegetable world can no longer expand. But I realized recently that I was sorely mistaken. Not only does my farmer occasionally introduce new vegetables to her repertoire (this year the daikon radish) and thus our share, but also there are plenty of vegetables that we get that I don't truly appreciate. The brussel sprout is one such vegetable.

We generally have brussel sprouts in at least one share each fall. Despite being right there in my refrigerator, I have never really taken the time to properly prepare and explore them. In fact I am sure there has been more than one year where I have found the bag of brussel sprouts still in the fridge months later all ready for the compost pile. This year I was determined to learn to love the brussel sprout, or well, at least give it a fair shake!

I started with a simple steamed brussel sprout, carrot, and leek dish with a horseradish sauce. We thought the strong sauce would disguise the taste of the brussel sprouts well. To our surprise, when steamed up fresh (this was only a day after they were picked), brussel sprouts don't need a strong sauce -- they tasted great! So the next time around I made a rice steam pot with the last of my basil in a pesto sauce. Again yummy yummy brussel sprouts. So I decided to let them be the core of a dish and made this pizza...

In addition to all those lovely brussel sprouts it has a nutritional yeast cheese-like sauce, caramelized onions, sun-dried tomatos, and capers. K said it was "yummylicious" which sounded like a complement to me. In fact we were filling out the farm survey after eating this and he considered putting brussel sprouts in his top 3 vegetables. Now that is one serious hat tip.

So I'd say we were extremely successful in learning to love the brussel sprout, now next year maybe I can figure out how to love those lovely chicories or maybe that odd-looking kohlrabi. But first I have just one more handful of brussel sprouts left. These will not go to waste this year!! But alas I must decide how to cook them. What is the best way? As I am just learning about this vegetable I need some more ideas.

saucy spinach & pepper pizza

For some reason that I can't recall there was a half sized pizza dough in the freezer. Since it is the weekend tomorrow, and we don't need leftovers to take to work for lunch, I decided this was as good a time as any to use up that small bit of dough. Oh how unfortunate, b/c this was a really tasty pizza, and I'd like to eat it again tomorrow for lunch...

Here is what we had on this pizza...

• a faux cheesy sauce
• steamed spinach
• green onions
• roasted red peppers
• capers
• passed the hot pepper flakes at the table, the sauce had nutritional yeast in it so didn't need to pass that...

A delicious combination of flavors. The roasted red peppers were especially delicious. These were from a huge bag of red bells that I bought recently on sale. I roasted a couple for soup the other night and luckily had some leftover to use on tonights pizza. Although I do still have some roasted peppers in the freezer from the farm this summer. I think I"ll be breaking those out for another roasted pepper pizza again soon... We rated this pizza an 8.5.