One of my mom's many nicknames for me growing up was Sprout. My older sister was Bean, and I was Sprout. The word brings to mind something young and impressionable, something small. Which is exactly what I was, at least until I hit 5'8" in 6th grade... but that's a traumatic story of youth to save for another time.
Anyway, the point is a sprout is a baby, right? Then explain that to the things I cooked up last night.
Instead of my usual hand-picked Brussels sprouts out of a cardboard box, I bought a couple of those sprouts-in-a-bucket jobs on my last trip to Fairway, which I realized last night are strategically arranged with the small ones on top so as to hide the significantly more frightening fist-sized sprouts that lay beneath. These sprouts reminded me of one of my favorite childhood books, The Kweeks of Kookatumdee, in which an overgrown Kweek named Jed terrorizes all the regular-sized Kweeks and eats much more than his fair share of plopalops.
A few of these sprouts had definitely hogged the plopalops. Observe:
If that sprout challenged that avocado to a fight, I think it would stand a good chance at winning, and that's saying something.
Today, this mutant sprout (and the even bigger one I uncovered after snapping this photo with my phone!) join the ranks of the Officially Ridiculous.
