Boil, Salt, Eat, and Click March 10, 2005March 1, 2017 Tomorrow: Your thoughts on the minimum wage. Today: Don’t miss the links beneath these sprouts. BRUSSELS SPROUTS Mark Kirby: ‘I hope your praise of this unjustly maligned vegetable will encourage others to come forth.’ ☞ And forth they came . . . Bart: ‘A moment’s more work, creating a taste that has received enthusiastic endorsement from every Brussel Sprouts eater ever invited to our table. Boil sprouts in a generous amount of plain chicken broth. Do not overboil to point of mush. Drain all the broth from sprouts. Roll wet sprouts in and coat well with bread crumbs seasoned with a generous amount of ground black pepper and oregano. Lightly brown the sprouts in butter in a hot skillet. Serve immediately. When possible, purchase the sprouts still on the stalk. We generally prepare this as a last minute dish. Removing the stalk of sprouts from the refrigerator sparks conversation and allows one to extol the dish.’ ☞ They come on stalks? I thought they were like little vegetable plums. In any event, Bart’s concept of ‘a moment’s more work’ does not quite jibe with mine. To me, a moment’s more work is putting them on a plate instead of eating them straight from the colander. David: ‘Boil a bit, sauté a bit with butter and walnuts or pecans. Mmmm, good.’ ☞ Sauté? What is this, sauté? We are Cooking Like a Guy™, may I remind you, not like a Guy de Maupassant. Michael Ammerman: “Just as there is an S on ‘Cliffs’ in ‘Cliffs Notes,’ there is an S on ‘brussels’ in ‘brussels sprouts,’ the name derived from the Belgian city.” ☞ Well, I checked before I put that up – Google has 118,000 references to Brussel Sprouts. But in response to this e-mail, I checked and see 328,000 hits for Brussels Sprouts . . . so henceforth I will go with the crowd. TWO LINKS WORTH CLICKING Here is James Grant with his dour view of the investing landscape (if Warren Buffett has $43 billion parked on the sidelines, maybe the sidelines are not an entirely dumb place to be). And here is Paul Krugman on the Administration’s bankruptcy bill (tightening the screws on the least fortunate among us, as we gradually turn the clock back to the 1890s).