A Question to Never Ask
Tonight, Pearl brought home salmon and the battle for the title of Side Dish raged as follows:
A Bundle of Super-thin Asparagus Spears vs. A bag of ~30 Brussels Sprouts
I didn't know much about Brussels sprouts, their preparation, or recommended portion size-- so I cut off the ugly parts, steamed them for 17 minutes, and steamed all 30 of them. It went pretty much exactly as one would expect.
Soon, Pearl and I were tucking into our substantial piles of roughage. We marveled at how each one seemed to taste just a little bit different and how they were, essentially, very small cabbages. We noted the extreme temperature of the vegetable's dense center, and studied the way the dark green leaves packed together to create these veritable Vitamin C hand grenades.
And then a question popped into my mind. A horrible question.
Without thinking about what I was doing, I blurted it out:
"So, why don't we hear about more people finding bugs inside these? If you look, these really are excellent places for bugs to hide... Right? I mean, I would..."
Pearl stopped in mid-chew and stared at the table, and I realized what a mistake I had made in asking my question-- a mistake that impacted us both.
"Great" said Pearl. As she swallowed, I looked at the Brussels sprouts as we both entertained identical images in our minds.
The rest of our meal stunk of fear and sickness, and we left half of the edible cocoons on our plates.
I suppose the moral here is most vegetables probably contain insects, or have contained them at some point. And that is just awful.
