The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D.,
Ph.D. (11/22/2014)
Question: Dear Answer Man, Abigail here. I hate to bother you, but I need to talk to
someone. I’m nearly out of my mind these
last few days what with Rusty bugging me about my Brussels sprouts. I’ve been planning the menu for Thanksgiving,
and he’s raised a fuss about my plans for salad of Brussels sprouts. I’ve always thought that Brussels sprouts
were traditional on a Thanksgiving menu, but he tells me that they nearly killed
a man in Scotland
Answer Man: Dear Abigail, I’m surprised that Rusty would
know about that story. It was in the Scottish
Western Isles edition of the BBC, and from what you said; I would guess that
Rusty gets his news from Fox News, not the BBC, especially the Western Isles
edition, like the Isles of Lewis and Harris in the Outer
Hebrides .
It’s true that a
duffer almost died from gorging on Brussels sprouts. He had to be taken to the hospital, or he
would have died. Too much of a good
thing.
Indeed, Jill
Young, chief executive of the Golden Jubilee Hospital, said: "Whilst we
think this is possibly the first-ever festive admission to hospital caused by
the consumption of Brussels sprouts, we were delighted that we were able to
stabilise his levels."
Brussels sprouts
are filled with vitamin K which thickens blood if eaten in large quantities. Sometime before he ate the sprouts, he’d had
a heart attack and surgery. After
stuffing himself with the sprouts, he needed his blood thinned so that it
wouldn’t clot and kill him.
Question: Thanks, Answer
Man.
Answer: That’s easy.
Either steam or roast them.
Boiling them until they’re soft releases a sulfurous odor that everyone
finds offensive. Or just cook them the
day before. Let them cool. The next day, they’ll be ready for your salad
with no odor. You can either use them
cold or heat them up with a little butter and bread crumbs.
Question: Thanks again.
One final thing. What about the
flatulence? Sometimes, Rusty says that
he feels like he’s “just going to bloat up and float right outside through the
front door.”
Answer: It’s hard to imagine Rusty levitating,
especially since he’s porked up. As for
the sprouts, I’m sorry there’s not much to be done about that except open the
windows and bring in the fan which may be a little difficult on a cold
November’s day. Even Benjamin Franklin
in 1781 wrote an essay on the problem but offered no solution. He even had a recipe using a pound of sprouts. He called it, “Rabbit Stew Adagio” which I
assume means “slow cooking.” The problem
is a sugar named riffinose in the sprouts.
The bacteria in the stomach can’t digest it. Actually, it serves as a kind of defense
mechanism for the plants because animals find it offensive. It just stays there, rotting, like a swamp, gassing
up, until it’s passed.
Beano,
a commercial product that contains an enzyme (α CAL
Besides all this,
sprouts are really good for you. 1-cup serving of
cooked sprouts has only 56 calories and less than 1 gram of fat, but contains plenty
of vitamins A, C, and K, as well as foliate and dietary fiber. One final thing. Thank is a transitive verb and needs a direct
object so don’t forget to thank God before you eat. Atheists, secularists, and other spiritual
flatliners may not know it, but ingratitude is bad form.
Copyright
© Dana Prom Smith 2014
Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona
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