Can Green Gag Balls Take the Heat?

Spicey Sprouts Transcript

Carrie what do you think of when you hear the word spicy mouth pain I mean you know tastes like burning kind of but today's recipe just might surprise you oh is it super hot no I think that the word spicy was used in the title of this recipe more as alliteration than as a description of fiery seasoning oh well isn't that interesting it is indeed I can't wait to get started

welcome to Mom's Wooden Spoon get your apron on and your fanny flicker ready as we cook up some nostalgia oh yummy hi I'm Kristen and I'm Carrie hey Carrie I have a question for you oh okay I'm ready what's green and goes to summer camp oh um nope I got nothing a Brussels scout oh that is so bad you told a dad joke I did today's recipe is called spicy sprouts so I wanted to be a little spicy I love the honesty of our podcast in that I did not just laugh that's true it was such a bad joke I just kind of stared at you dead eyed why are you telling this horrible joke all right so back to spicy sprouts yes this recipe comes from Mary's Memo February 12, 1979 ooh

now as I was looking at this recipe Carrie I was wondering gosh what makes it spicy well I'm excited to hear I know a little Tabasco right your husband would love that my husband loves spicy foods I do too red chili peppers ooh little chili flakes that's what they're called no Carrie a teaspoon and a half of dijon mustard what that's what makes it spicy wow and not to mention spicy is spelled s-p-i-c-e-y because that's how spicy people spell it I wondered why Mary would have spelled spicy that way and I looked it up okay apparently it is kind of an antiquated way of spelling spicy interesting so it's yeah it's not wrong right it just is kind of an old-fashioned way and that everybody spells it s-p-i-c-y nowadays is that kind of like the possum opossum idea you're a smart aleck Carrie's family makes fun of me for saying opossum and not just possum so I'd like to hear from you all to back me up or not and let us know how you pronounce possum is it opossum like me right do you get caught doing something and you just stop and you play dead like an opossum you're such a jerk or like a possum

all right so spicy sprouts here's the recipe it says at the top of it people either like Brussels sprouts or they don't but for all who do here's a spicy way to serve them fantastic yup so it is Brussels sprouts yup how'd you guess I'm smart yep one pint of fresh sprouts cleaned and crisp tender cooked and drained and oh do I have a story about crisp tender and pints okay yep and then a half a stick of butter that you mix with the incredibly huge amount of dijon mustard and then a teaspoon of dry minced parsley which has so much flavor yes and then we don't want to get crazy you don't want to overpower the spice of the mustard with no no or overpower the extremely mild flavor of Brussels sprouts and then it has you know to add to the flavor not an eighth of a teaspoon not a quarter of a teaspoon of garlic powder a speck a speck not even a dash I know right or a pinch no it is a speck less than an eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder wow yeah so we're going to give this a try all right so the first thing we need to do is clean these and it said to cook them until they were crisp tender and I thought what did they mean by crisp tender in the 1970s well because if we're gonna cook them and then drain obviously we're boiling them right and so I had to look this up and when I did apparently crisp tender is a housewife or anybody living in the 70s their way to get away from the old-fashioned boiling until it's mush okay right and so crisp tender came out in the 70s as a way to not turn vegetables into complete and utter mush and so I had to look up how cooking crisp tender works right right because we really don't boil vegetables much anymore no yep and so I found a recipe for it where you basically are blanching them oh except for we are not going to plunge them into freezing cold ice water because I don't want cold sprouts mixed with half a stick of butter right so you blanch them and you just take them out at about eight minutes is what I found yeah okay well I would like to thank culinary progress for moving past the boiling of vegetables to mush well I looked up why people boiled vegetables when there's so many beautiful ways to cook them to rust them to saute them and what I found is that people did not roast vegetables because way back in the day in England the oven was not thought of for doing anything but baking breads and cakes so the stove top was where you prepared vegetables and meat unless it was something large like a leg of lamb sure well and then also I would imagine that ovens well they weren't as well insulated as they are now so in the summer when all these fresh vegetables are available who wants to heat the house up to epic temperatures right for some Brussels sprouts you throw them on the stovetop yep and so they have been boiled since the beginning of time hence the reason Carrie and I affectionately call them green gag balls oh they totally are I love them today I roast them in some olive oil and then put a little balsamic vinegar and bacon and I even put a little sprinkling of pomegranate seeds on the top and it's so good there's a million delicious ways to cook Brussels sprouts that does not involve boiling them that's true and a lot of them do involve the bacon oh well because bacon makes everything better now it's funny Carrie I decided to look up the origin of the word green gag balls so did I oh no it was bad listeners do not Google the words green gag balls you will not get Brussels sprouts it is not a family friendly oriented result list you didn't do it while at work did you it did not that would have been horrible mortifying oh my goodness I did that at work once I had gone to a conference and heard a lady speak and I needed some information about her and I couldn't quite remember her name so I was just kind of you know throwing it into the search engine see what I could find and she came up with her own website and I know she was you know kind of known in the field so I clicked on it she was a porn star it was not the woman oh my goodness I heard speak it was a work related speaking engagement and so I just looked up a porn star at work uh oh I immediately ran and told my boss who laughed so hard she cried um she was not sensitive to my concern at all oh well at least she didn't get in trouble right I didn't no right so we're picking up a pint of Brussels sprouts and I have a funny story one of my friends tells this story about her childhood her mom sent her to the corner store with a list okay and she was supposed to get a pint of beans well she had only ever read the word pint and so she went to the counter and said hello I would like a pint of beans please and the person at the counter laughed at her and she was mortified poor thing but you know that happens to a lot of people there I know that you make fun of my Tik Tok um addiction addiction okay I'll admit it and there are some Tik-Tokers who have recently been talking about the words that they mispronounced for a long time because they had only ever read them yes you know like words like epitome they would say right let's see some others posthumous posthumous right my husband is famous for being 21 years old and ordering a carafe of wine oh it's a carafe yeah oh they didn't know what he was talking about a carafe of wine I think we've all done that he was on a date he thought he was being so suave

I feel so bad for him oh my goodness yep so I'm sure we've all done so yeah our step-dad when he was a little boy he used to read Batman and Robin comics and would mispronounce Batman and Robin the dynamic duo the dynamic duo that's so great if you're not a fan they are the dynamic duo um yeah yeah and I think his brother read him the comics and he was the one who mispronounced it and so then they both just thought it was the dynamic duo of course yes yeah well so we have trimmed the little stems and any of the gross kind of mildewy pieces off of these brussels sprouts and we're gonna pop them in a pot of boiling salted water for eight minutes okay the Brussels sprouts are in the pot boiling until they're tender crisp or crisp tender fantastic I'm happy that they are not mush yeah well here's hoping that they're not right that's what I remember as a kid that green gag balls were kind of white and mushy oh yeah it kind of boiled all the color out of them and this is the point of tender crisp is to when you blanch things they stay bright green sure or brightly colored so here's hoping I'm gonna go take a peek in a minute and see how they're doing but we did set the timer for eight minutes they were tiny little Brussels sprouts so I I may want to check them and see if they are crisp tender in maybe six minutes or so sure we'll see yeah I think that sounds great all right you had mentioned just a little bit ago that you love Brussels sprouts I do hated them as a kid oh yeah I really enjoy them now yes there's a scientific reason for this what yeah so they have been breeding Brussels sprouts so that they are becoming less bitter oh my gosh it's a whole lot of science about the chemical in it it's they're made that way so that bugs don't eat them because it's unappealing to bugs as well so they naturally grow that way so they don't get bug eaten right but then they don't taste as good right so whatever that chemical is they've bred it so that there's less of that in today's Brussels sprouts so the reason people who hated them of days past it may be because we're not boiling them within an inch of their life right but it may be because the Brussels sprout actually tastes less bitter today well I do not think that they taste as bitter as I remember them but I always always oven roast them right or I cook them in a skillet and I let them get super super brown on the bottoms I cut them in half and then I flip them over and let the the backs get good and brown and I think that roasting um kind of brings out the sweetness of them and kind of cuts down on the bitter oh the crispy Brussels sprout bits are just the best you remember every time I make Brussels sprouts for one of our holiday get-togethers you and your daughter always say will you burn them please and so I I do and the last time we got together I asked mom how she liked the the meal and she goes I loved it all except for somebody burned the Brussels sprouts it's all Carrie's fault that's what she wanted and my daughter and I will stand over there and pick out the little crispy bits like we love them yes you do oh that's so funny so when I was looking up Brussels sprouts I was um looking up different ways that you could use them okay and I found an April Fool's recipe that you might want to try oh okay I might know what this is so yes so let's see okay so you know how you make those delicious kind of truffle balls you take crunched up Oreo cookies and you mix them with like cream cheese or frosting yes and well you can make cake balls like this too you can take your leftover cake and mix it with frosting make balls and then you dip them in chocolate yes well this mom took uncooked Brussels sprouts dipped them in chocolate decorated them with sprinkles and drizzles and presented those to her sons on April Fool's day so mean I saw some lady that did that and used um a candy wrapper of like those kind of balls like the I don't know how you pronounce it that Ferrero Rocher yes and they took out the candy put those in and then handed them out as trick or treat candy what so bad talk about that's almost worse than putting needles inside the kids trick or treat candy

or maybe that kid belongs to parents who pilfer all the good candy can you imagine the parent biting into that they're like French candy now mind you folks I do not in any way endorse putting needles oh my gosh that's just what we were always told as kids our parents said we need to go through your candy to check for needles and pins in it well back in the day you could take your candy to Mcdonald's and they would scan it if I made that up or is that no I think that might have been true I don't think we ever did that no but you could Mom just did it by taste testing all of our candy

ooh that's big enough to have a needle bite yeah let me check that out guys that goes along with cleaning up the ice cream let me clean it up for you and then you get your ice cream cone back and it's half gone I don't know what happened could I have a little taste of your candy bar chomp like a quarter of it left what I swear as a kid she would ask for a bite of the candy bar and I would watch wide-eyed as half of the candy bar would disappear into in my child mind her gaping pie hole it was oh it was so traumatic and I'm purposefully taking these small little bites to save it oh you were a saver too you hoarded your Halloween candy and made sure that you know sometimes you put it in your room and you would be very careful about it and eat it very slowly I did not I ate the heck out of my candy but if you left it out our parent's friends would come over and pilfer our Halloween candy oh and I would that reminds me I would eat all of the bad like the tootsie rolls tootsie rolls and the other not that tootsie rolls are bad they were my least favorite so I would save all the chocolate bars and all the Ferrero Rocher we never got Ferrero Rocher what are you talking about but I would I would save all the good candy for last and eat my least favorites first and then our parents had a friend over and she said oh can I have some of your Halloween candy sure of course and then she never asked again but continued to get up and go back to the Halloween candy bowl over and oh and it's all my good stuff yeah my most favorite and she's just I as a kid I swear she ate half and I knew if I said something I mean I was a goner that was traumatic because this was you know it was a time when we didn't really go get stuff like that nowadays my kid could get candy whenever he wants you know but then this was like our store for a couple of months yes our hoard of candy so to have someone take the best pieces yeah you know I remember I was in band in middle school and did you ever participate in anything where you had to sell those World's Finest Chocolate Bars I did not yes so you come home with this gigantic box of World's Finest Chocolate Bars and they're sitting in your bedroom and you just start eating of course because it's just one just one and then you get down and half the boxes go and you're like oh I owe 50 dollars this is the world's finest chocolate I can't stop eating it looks like we have about 26 seconds so okay I'm gonna go check the Brussels sprouts and see if they look green and tender crisp perfect and while you do that I also looked up some things about Brussels sprouts and much to my surprise I found them mentioned on webmd what why I don't know but I feel like I need to tell you what I found I am so interested there um apparently a food source obviously and a medicine a medicine and so then it tells you that the Brussels sprout is taken by mouth oh god what else are you gonna do with it what are the other choices um and then it has a whole bunch of things that it could fix um this is my favorite line when taken by mouth Brussels sprout is likely safe when consumed in food amounts what the heck does that mean they're a food that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard

what it's a vegetable you're supposed to eat them likely safe what's a food amount I don't know what's a food amount that is crazy I couldn't believe it oh my gosh well I've taken the Brussels sprouts out and they are nice and bright green oh cool and so we're going to um I'm going to test it with a little fork and see if it is tender or crisp well it feels tender crisp I guess we're going to find out the Fork went into it so that's definitely tender right so we're going to add the dijon mustard to the butter I think we have to whip it up uh along with our speck of garlic powder and our teaspoon of the parsley flakes so let's do the parsley flakes first an entire teaspoon all right then I'm going to start with the dijon mustard so I was thinking about dijon mustard and I remembered that I did it's basically the dumbest thing ever when we went out after Christmas shopping now Carrie and I love going after Christmas shopping it is almost better than Christmas because we get the best deals it is just so so fun and you kind of get in a shopper's rush frenzy yes and you're like oh my gosh okay so that is so cheap who would like that and then by the time you get to the end of it you're like I don't care who would like that that's cheap I'm buying it originally twenty dollars and I'm getting it for five

somebody will love it somebody's gonna love this so I purchased a mustard tree is it like in a pot no it's little teeny tiny jars of specially flavored dijon mustard in a little triangularly shaped box did you buy that to give to me you hate mustard I would not do that boy do I hate mustard so I thought oh I can find someone to give a mustard treat to Carrie who wants a mustard tree for Christmas well I surely cannot imagine I can't imagine why on earth I bought that so I pulled that out of the gift closet and we're going to try something okay okay so I think one half of our brussels sprouts will be in regular I'm doing air quotes spicy dijon all right and then the other one we have three mustards to choose from and Carrie because I love you I'm going to give you the choice awesome I feel like I need to interject before we proceed with the mustard selection I do hate mustard you do I have a reason oh that's right yes you do it's so bad so when I was a kid my mom put mothballs in our garden to keep the rabbits away that's right apparently this smell they don't like it I'm not sure if it actually works but she did it I bet it doesn't but that's another story for another day yes so I went out and came back in and as she would say I had mothball breath so I think odds are pretty good I popped it in my mouth it was unpleasant I spit it out but they're you know highly toxic that's right but you had a good reason you weren't just some weirdo kid eating moth balls Mom and Dad had come back from a vacation in Scotland yes and they had purchased little cookies little teeny tiny cookies covered in powdered sugar that kind of look like moth balls right because every kid should eat cookies out of the garden but yes yeah so let's go with let's give me the benefit of the dough it looks like a cookie a super fresh cookie laying right here in the dirt how delicious gosh today is my lucky day picked that up popped it in my mouth oh not a cookie spit it out came in Mom smelled mothball on my breath freaked out she did I remember called the doctor who said give her mustard what I recall is sitting on the counter crying as my mom is taking yellow mustard by the spoonful and shoving them in my mouth and making me swallow them and I had multiple spoonfuls yes and I did not let go of the mothball um she ultimately took matters into her own hand literally and um she stuck her finger down your throat yeah oh my goodness she was worried she was scared to death you know and she was a nurse so I'm surprised we didn't have like Ipecac syrup or right but I I think I had heard that dry mustard is supposed to make you throw up but well that's what she has always said she didn't realize that the doctor meant dry mustard so I thought well let me look that up is that real no dry mustard doesn't oh my gosh can you imagine if she had put dry mustard in your mouth you would have been like those kids and those people who did the cinnamon challenge it would have come at your nose your eyes would have been watering though I'm never watering with the spoonfuls oh no wonder you hate mustard yeah all right so let's take a look at these delicious yeah mustard tree well let me dip my finger in them each and try them out I ain't opening them all these cost five dollars you pick your daggone one you want and they are all dijon based mustards so what is yours mine is horseradish ooh and you like horseradish this one is main maple champagne mustard oh I'm gonna definitely say no to that no that does not sound good no and our other choice is blue cheese herb mustard what should we do what shall we do you know I like the look of the blue cheese herb mustard it's very herby looking yeah so let's try that okay all right so how about if you take the dijon the fancy one and put it in with the butter and then we're going to mix these up and I will take the regular dijon we have halved the butter so we're going to put half of the Brussels sprouts into each container so don't use a full dose of mustard right so the the mustard it calls for one and a half teaspoons of dijon and so we're cutting that in half so it's we need like what three quarters of a teaspoon okay so we'll just kind of fake that perfect so we're going to mix the mustard with the butter and the parsley and the spec oh garlic and I'm going to get these very green brussels sprouts out of the strainer and we're going to mix them up in the bowls we'll kind of do half and half and see how this tastes the reason I think that they call it spicy sprouts is because dijon mustard is considered spicier than yellow mustard because it's made with brown mustard seeds instead of yellow and brown are supposed to be a little bit spicier I don't necessarily think of dijon as being spicier I just think of it as having it like a little different flavor so I'm gonna add my sprouts to the dijon butter let's mix them up and see what a pint of Brussels sprouts taste like in this compound butter all right let's stir this up oh Carrie this one with just the plain dijon is quite strong is it maybe it's going to be spicy I'm going to scoop mine on the right hand side and you scoop yours on the left-hand side ooh they're so pretty all right so this is a February recipe from 1979 and while we have talked a lot about Brussels sprouts we haven't mentioned the time frame that all this was going on right Valentine's Day 1979 I mean this is like a meal of love right here I guess so yeah and so had you Valentine's Day 1979 made this for your one true love you could have then sat down and watched the Valentine's primetime specials of that evening oh what would they have been at first you would have been treated to the Bugs Bunny Valentine day special where Elmer Fudd is cupid making them all fall in love with each other from his cupid arrows followed by the Popeye Valentine's special in which Popeye does not give Olive Oil a gift and in a fit of rage she boards the Valentine boat in search of a new Valentine and then of course hijinx and Bluto are involved you know it's funny that they had um cartoon Valentine's specials yeah because when I looked up the date 1979 I found out something very very special that it was the year that Scrappy-Doo premiered in Scooby-Doo oh the year Scooby-Doo jumped the shark I know but you know what that reminds me of our cousin Hank's Scrappy traps oh my gosh and are you going to tell the story yeah yeah absolutely pinned one on him I I really did so we went to visit them and he was big into making Scrappy traps yeah which were he would put a I don't know like a bookshelf in front of a door and then get you to come in and you push and you're like oh no it's stuck he's like no no just push harder until you knocked over the entire bookshelf and then laugh hysterically and leave you to clean up the bookshelf and he goes Scrappy trap yes right so I went into my aunt and uncle's bedroom and I got on their exercise bicycle and as I was pedaling the curtains got stuck in the pedals and it ripped the curtains off of the wall oh the curtain rod and everything the whole curtain rod and everything came down and oh you're me I was I was humiliated first of all and second of all I blamed it on his Scrappy traps Hank set a Scrappy trap for me he did and you know what he didn't say he didn't so I went with it he was probably saying ooh I should have thought of that

that's right but I didn't get in trouble because good old Hank was doing Scrappy traps all right so I'm gonna get out some plates some forks we're gonna try these and let you know how they taste we'll be right back okay well we decided to just forego the plates why get those dirty when we can eat directly out of the serving container I'm all for it absolutely it's just us right yes all right so Carrie's going to go first which one would you like to taste first well I have tasted the butter of the dijon yeah and I will be honest in that I am not super excited to try that again okay so try the blue cheese it was pretty mustardy for me yeah it's funny um while she chews that I'm going to see if she remembers a soda that we had one Thanksgiving do you remember we bought a case of these Thanksgiving flavored sodas and they were some of them were delicious pumpkin pie cranberry sauce but then it got weird it got to be turkey and gravy yup stuffing and Brussels sprouts yes so before we talk about how delicious those sodas were not at all tell us what you think of the blue cheese Brussels sprouts I mean it is absolutely not even remotely spicy the Brussels sprouts are not bad there's a little crunch going on there oh I got them crisp tender or tender crisp I can't really remember which way you really did and I tried the blue cheese uh dijon and there's a nice flavor of blue cheese followed by a mild hint of dijon it did not make me mustard pucker um and I found it mustard pucker wait a minute that sounds so inappropriate oh I eat mustard though and my whole face just uh just freezes every muscle in my face contracts painfully oh my goodness I just dislike it so I that didn't happen it was not bad you know I just tried the plain dijon ones I cannot taste the dijon yeah go for it you tried one don't eat one as I I'm not going to eat a blue cheese as you eat them but you give that a try so I'm truly nervous oh you're gonna like this I got this so back to the sodas I think actually the Brussels sprouts weren't as bad as the turkey and gravy to me drinking liquid turkey just was awful awful to me um I do not like those no what don't you like about it ah the all of it oh I just thought they were just fine but they didn't have that much flavor I guess I should have gotten a little more of the butter maybe on it maybe it is honestly just the mustard flavor there's just enough of it that it's thoroughly unappealing to me but I would not eat the dijon but I would absolutely eat the blue cheese dijon Brussels sprouts they are so good the blue cheese dijon is ten times better it is delicious but of course there was no blue cheese dijon in our little hometown no in the 70s no I mean heck as far as our home refrigerator was concerned there was no dijon it was yellow or nothing um hum so I mean this was kind of fancy in the fact that you were using dijon mustard that's right um but since we got the chance to modernize the recipe I think using one of those fancy dijons is oh now we have ruined your opportunity to pass on this recipe and the mustard tree to one of your very best friends oh no not me okay I won't pass on that mustard tree to you but you know this does give me room to make these Brussels sprouts again and try the Maine maple champagne and the horseradish I think the horseradish will be delicious the Maine maple champagne may also be good it just I don't know why it just sounds so unappealing to me that yeah but you know horseradish um would actually make these spicy sprouts it really oh we should have done that I didn't think of it that would have been perfect oh well the blue cheese was really really good well I would say to the original recipe I would not give it a thumbs up but to the amended recipe I would absolutely give it a thumbs up I would eat those I would willingly serve those to somebody and you know they were tender crisp they were not the boiled Brussels sprouts of our childhood no I had no idea you could do that yep so it's eight minutes boiling water these were even itty bitty little Brussels sprouts and the eight minutes was not too much they came out bright green I highly salted the water it was great they were not green gag balls not one bit wow well that's it for this episode as always to see pictures of the food we cooked today and a copy of the original Mary's Memo recipe just head over to momswoodenspoon.com if you enjoyed today's podcast please let your friends and family know about us we would really appreciate it

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