brussels_sprouts ovenbird They need a little love to be their most delicious selves. Don’t we all? Here’s my recipe: Fry a pound of bacon first, and save the rendered fat. This goes on a baking sheet with halved brussels sprouts, salt, and pepper. Roast at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, stir and roast for another 15. While waiting for the timer to go off let Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt dazzle you with the blues. (Wish for a moment that you’d stuck with your violin lessons.) Chop the cooked bacon and add to the baking sheet for the last five minutes. Drizzle everything with a balsamic reduction. Eat three brussels sprouts with your fingers, hot from the oven, tasting the silky bacon fat on your tongue. Wish you were at home with your brother and parents drinking a glass of Taylor Fladgate 10 year old port, eating cranberry sauce with a spoon, and surreptitiously sticking your finger in the sticky edges of the apple pie in order to get a preview of the perfect medley of cinnamon and sugar. Give thanks for the extraordinary gift of love, even when the bodies that carry it are far from your aching arms. 251012 ... ovenbird (I should have brought the apple pie I wanted to bring to thanksgiving dinner because, in a fun plot twist, my mother-in-law burned my brussels sprouts to a crisp while reheating them so no one got to eat them.) 251012 what's it to you? who go blather from