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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

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What?  Do you mean my loose Brussels Collards?  

No, they taste the same.  Very good, but the heads are so loose it takes a 
lot of sprouts to make a serving.

A couple of people had opined in this thread that no one at their table liked 
the sprouts, or detested them.

Before rendering final judgement, folks, make sure someone has cooked them 
correctly.  This goes for a lot of foods that are unpopular.

When I was a child the only exposure I got to spinach was in the p.s. lunch 
room.  It was a ghastly dark green slime that looked like someone had already 
eaten it once.  If it wasn't repulsive enough already, they put a slice of 
boiled egg on it.  This was before the days of "Green Eggs and Ham" and so 
when 
the spinach bled through the egg and dyed it green, it was a real gastronomic 
nightmare.

It being the 50's and childrens delicate sensibilities not being the main 
concern, everyone was required to take three bites of everything on their 
lunch 
plate.  Many a kid upchucked all over an insistant teacher.   Ah  p.s.

Needless to say spinach soon took on the same food appeal as motor oil or 
fish offal.  I was an adult before I came across the notion of eating raw 
spinach.  Then from there to learn that one cooks spinach by just heating it, 
just 
letting a little steam rise from it, not boiling it for three hours.

Brussels Sprouts are that way.  They want cooking ony until the center of the 
sprout is hot.  Steaming is a good way to cook them.   Once at the local 
meat-and-two-seasoned-vegetables restaurant where they had a weekly catfish 
night 
(and can you believe there are even people who don't like catfish!) they 
listed Brussels Sprouts on the menu and I thought 'Why not?'

They were overly cooked, very overly, and inedible.

Like that a friend of ours said he never ate cooked greens.  At our table he 
eventually had mustard, kale, beet tops, turnip tops, cressy greens, poke, 
spinach, lambs quarters, and purslane and declared them all to be 'fit for 
every 
occasion.'   He'd never before had them cooked properly.

Might not be the sprouts.  Might just be the cooking.   </HTML>