The Presence of Sprouts

Brussels sprouts at the market stand.

My childhood was rich in bugs, books, and reptiles, but included just a few lonely and often freezer-burned vegetables. I began exploring the full range of vegetalia only in adulthood, and I’ve been carrying on with Brussels sprouts in particular for several years now. This torrid affair is of short duration, but harbors plenty of passion.

To clarify…my relationship with sprouts involves no “falling in love,” but rather a vivid awakening to the flavors of a complex vegetable. The Brussels sprout is substantive, a deft contributor to taste and texture, a participant with hearty sauces or a simple glug of fresh olive oil. While an extended bath in hot water produces sad and squishy sprouts, a hearty handful responds with alacrity to the flash and heat of flame, pairing sweetness with char. The Brussels sprout delivers a mouthful of umami, especially when its juices meld with the richness of pork fat, the crunch of nuts, or the pop of peppers.

Members of the cabbage family have long been friends of humans, offering hearty nutrients in myriad packages. According to botanist Wolf Storl, “Stone Age hunters cherished the nourishing vegetable and the seeds for oil,” working with its genetic abundance to tease out varieties adapted to a wide range of micro-climates, partnering so successfully that cabbages can be categorized as “anthropochore” – i.e. “distributed by humans, whether deliberately or accidentally.”[i] Human-directed permutations have resulted in a wide array of vegetative bodies, including a multiplicity of cabbage colors and shapes, and the now-familiar forms of broccoli, collards, and kale. Brussels sprouts display their genetic lineage proudly, lining up on the stalk of the parent plant like a veritable horde of infant cabbages.

Members of the cabbage family were popular around the globe, appearing in records of early humans from Australia to Greece to North America. Hildegard von Bingen, writing more than a thousand years ago in what is now Germany, extolled “both red and white cabbage.”[ii] The multiple manifestations of the cabbage family are particularly suited to fermentation, transforming, in combination with lactic acid and sufficient time, into sauerkraut and other lactobacillic delicacies.

A sprout start, going into the ground in my greenhouse.

I’ve repetitively sampled the succulent flavors of the Brussels sprout, and am at a critical point in this youthful phase of our relationship. To know Brussels sprouts more deeply, I must shift the particulars of our relationship. The time has come to cohabit. No more sprout snacks or quick fixes from the market stand. I’m ready to commit to the whole sprout, chancy growing habit and all. Thus, I enter the company of sprout growers, many of whom eventually throw up their hands in frustration at the irregularities of the vegetable and transfer their affections to an easygoing genetic cousin like red cabbage that thrives on neglect.

Notoriously heavy feeders, Brussels sprouts ask much of their keepers. Cool weather, space to spread, and rich soil top their list of demands. Why would I want to share space with such a finicky creature, especially when so many other easy-keeping options abound? It is only in being with, in the attention that physical presence requires, that I come into intimate relationship with any life form, including children, lovers, and weather. I can intellectually comprehend the movement of air currents and volatile plant oils, but true knowing arrives when I take in a pungent lungful of sage on the wind. I might enjoy the banter of a casual acquaintance, but it is the twelve-hour road trip where we reveal our deeper selves to each other. Occasional conversation with a child about their favorite color is a far cry from the felt heat of a rising fever, or the challenge of making up distracting rhymes to convince them to hang for just a few more minutes in the steamy bathroom to assuage a croupy cough.

We have time and attention in limited quantities, and I am choosing to allocate some of both to the care of Brussels sprouts. Typically, we rate such commitments as supposed exchanges and calculate their usefulness according to what such a transaction delivers. My Brussels sprout experiment might result in a bountiful harvest. It is also possible that this peculiar vegetable will give me nothing but sprout eyes, the comprehension of some life form outside of myself, a way to recognize nourishment beyond the currency of commodity consumption. If I enter the reluctant ranks of former sprout growers come fall, I will undoubtedly be the richer for it, with the abundance of experience and connection, even if I have to do without the allure of homegrown sprouts.

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[i] Wolf D. Storl, A Curious History of Vegetables: Aphrodisiacal and Healing Properties, Folk Tales, Garden Tips, and Recipes, North Atlantic Books, 2016, p. 55.

[ii] Ibid, p. 57.