I hated brussel sprouts for years, and then a friend made me awesome brussel sprouts, and then I had a fantastic salad with brussel sprouts in it a month or so back.

So now I like brussel sprouts. The key is not to boil them; you have to braise or roast them to keep them from getting bitter.

I love them myself, but I have gotten out of the cooking habit, so I don't buy a lot of stuff that requires thought and effort.

My parents are on really slow dialup. They can't get cable where they are and for some reason I don't get, are dragging their feet about dsl.

Buy them! Slather them in olive oil, salt and roast!

Then eat. Nom nom nom.

I never tried them really until I saw an episode of Barefoot Contessa and they looked easy to make and easy.

I'll have a brief rant about stupid Sandra Lee and her cooking show. I hate it. It's not good cooking at all and all the stuff has to be expensive. More than that she perpetuates the idea that cooking good food is complicated.

She never does anything simple like that. If she did brussel sprouts they'd be something like from frozen, thawed, marinated in bottled Italian Dressing, and some other odd ball thing and then put in the slow cooker. Oh! or maybe a tablespoon of thawed frozen lemonade concentrate instead of fresh lemon juice (I've seen her use frozen limeade instead of fresh lime juice).

Off my soap box now.

sara, ooh. nevermind.

I love that my mom has cable and wireless at home. Granted, I just took 10 minutes reminding her how to log into chat to see us. But, you know. It's all good.

I can't wait to see you!

And this woman has a show!? Wow.

If my parents ever get anything else, while Dad will figure out the basics....yeah, um.

Can't believe it is only a week. Kinda caught me off guard.

Oh yeah, Sandra Lee is the worst.

Sandra Lee makes everything both grosser and way more complicated than it should be. I saw one episode where she made parmesan mashed potatoes with powdered alfredo sauce mix. Using grated cheese from the deli counter would have been exactly the same amount of work and tasted so much better, and been real food.

Semi Homemade with Sandra Lee

The show is half an hour and has three parts. Her kitchen is always redecorated to match her theme of the show (always). She does the cooking part, then the cocktails part , the Table scapes, where she shows you how to over decorate your table using things you have "around" or have gone nad spent a fortune for at the craft store and various places. She made a Kwanzaa cake one year that featured corn nuts.

Evidentally she was at CIA for 3 weeks and then quit becuase it was too hard.

She regularly talks about buying a pie at the grocery store, (say an apple or pumpkin), and then scraping out the filling and using that in some other shell. "and you can use the crust over ice cream!"

Oh and she's made cheesy corn. She took fresh corn, pulled the sliks off, left the leaves to be grilled. Sounds fine right? No, then she slathers it with margarine, and then takes a packet of cheese from KRaft Mac and Cheese, and rolls the corn in the cheese powder, folds the leaves up, wraps in foil to be grilled.