Global Warning

17 January 2009

Theodore Dalrymple delivers a Global Warning

My wife tells me, and so it must be right, that now that we are retired we must beware of the involution of our habits and interests. It is all too easy for old people to live the petty round, in which a visit to the grocer seems an expedition of some magnitude, and not to change their clothes for weeks on end.

And yet there is something deeply reassuring about the scale of the quotidian, that seems suddenly upon retirement to be so much more important than it seemed before: besides, one cannot always be considering the deepest questions of existence, and not being a cosmologist or an astronomer, the vastness and coldness of the universe frightens me.

I was in a café the other day when two academics, a man and a woman, sat at the table next to me. They started off talking about their important academic research in Moscow, but then they got on to the problem that really exercised them: whether one should score Brussels sprouts in their base before cooking them.

I couldn’t help joining in the discussion after the woman said that her mother used to cook sprouts for what seemed like two days before serving them. This imparted their smell to the whole house, but deprived the sprouts themselves of all taste. I asked whether her mother had been a true British cook of the old school, and served the tasteless mush with a good dollop of the water in which it had been boiled, thus diluting further the thin and miserable gravy?

We spent a happy few minutes discussing together the Brussels sprout problem. I suggested a double blind trial to settle the issue. Somehow, the sheer unimportance of it all gave a lift to my heart.

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john problem

January 15th, 2009 6:32pm Report this comment

Wish I lived near a cafe like that. Does one have to live near academe? I live near agriculture and the talk is always of sprouts et al. I've tried to get the conversation round to the early renaissance, and its love of fresh veg. but it never works.

JohnAnt

January 16th, 2009 12:42pm Report this comment

Score the base of sprouts? No. The base should be al dente. Remove Outer leaves (minimum necessary) and trim the base (ditto). And steam, not boil, until barely cooked. Finish by rolling 2 minutes in butter or olive oil and garlic and green pumpkin seeds and (if liked) some finely chopped hot red or green chili pepper. That's it.

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