Month: October 2010

Brussels Sprouts Appreciation Club

/ eljanik / 1 Comment

I have a, perhaps, unnatural love of brussels sprouts. A whole stalk can easily become my dinner when roasted in olive oil and lightly salted (my husband loves them too, though, so I try to share). And I seriously think many times while eating them, “these are way better than any candy.” Seriously. I do.

Many people hate brussels sprouts. And I used to be one of them.

As a kid, my parents would buy bags of frozen sprouts and steam them, topping the whole lot with butter. My mom, despite being incredibly picky about food, happened to love brussels sprouts. I would eat them, but always quickly and sometimes covered in parmesan cheese (the sawdust from the green can, that is). I could never imagine that there would be day when I would voluntarily eat them, much less look forward to their appearance at the market.

But then, about 7 years ago, for reasons still mysterious, I woke up CRAVING them. Having moved out of my parents’ house nearly five years earlier, I’m not sure I had eaten even one in that time. Nor had I ever thought about them. So I’m not sure why I needed those tiny cabbages so badly that day. Maybe its my Polish blood craving some cabbage-y goodness. I went to the store and purchased the same bag of frozen sprouts my mom had bought so many times. And I ate them all in one sitting. I loved them. I had to have more.

Forsaking frozen for fresh, I now eagerly await the appearance of the mutant stalk at the farmers market. One vendor had them labeled “Wisconsin Palm Trees” a few weeks back and they did look kind of tropical, with their nubby stalk and oversized leaves flopping over the top. I popped them off the stalk and roasted them for 35 minutes. I ate so many I nearly gave myself a stomach ache. I might be the first person to overdose on brussels sprouts.

To join my brussels sprouts appreciation club,  cook this from 101Cookbooks and see if you can resist.

The Flow of Electricity

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Did you know that we used to think electricity was a fluid? That’s why we use words like “current” and “flow” to describe what is clearly not a liquid. But in the 19th century, electricity was a force that many believed had the power to heal and recharge humans.

In the early years of scientific medicine, many doctors came to believe that nervous diseases had physical causes and could only be cured by physical means. Some compared humans to batteries, saying that we sometimes suffered from a low charge that needed a jolt of energy to recharge. This idea seemed to offer a legitimate explanation for the worn out businessman, the languishing youth, and the excitable, swooning woman of the 19th century. This “disease” came to be called “neurasthenia,” a name popularized by physician George M. Beard who combined all of the so-called symptoms of the disease under one named cause.

The solution? Electricity (it also probably didn’t hurt that Beard happened to be friends with Thomas Edison, the electric wizard of Menlo Park).  Many doctors came to believe that we could recharge our “neural batteries” with electricity. And so various devices purporting to soothe weary brains began to appear with increasing frequency. My favorite is Dr. Scott’s Electric Hair-Brush, which claimed to both make hair more glossy and calm worn-out brains.

The era of electric medicine began to come to an end by the turn-of-the-20th century. Because neither neurasthenia nor electricity actually exhibited physical changes–only proclamations of change (suggestion is powerful)–skepticism about its power began to emerge in the medical community. We also had new theories about mental illness and the mind as scientific research advanced. Electricity remained a magical force, though, its enigmatic nature and invisible power provoking the imagination to ever more fantastical heights.