It’s my own fault.  @abelandcole provide me with the opportunity to pre-check the contents of each fruit and veg box, to filter out things CHiP and I don’t like but I’m not very good at remembering.  Consequently this week’s box included brussel sprouts.  However one of the reasons for getting the box in the first place was to add some more variety to our diet so… I turned to Twitter:

A tweet for help

And within minutes, several people had responded:

Responses via twitter

On Facebook too:

Response via Facebook

The prospect of left-over tuna and rice forced my hand this evening when I opted instead to do a compare and contrast experiment using all five suggestions:

• steamed with butter (@big_norm)
• fried with red onion and balsamic vinegar (Sharon)
• fried with bacon (@cubicgarden)
• fried with bacon, pine nuts and cheese (@dani_dutra)
• à l’orange (@jenblacker)

Except I had a limited quantity of sprouts so I decided that the two fried with bacon suggestions could be merged into one (the more interesting one, of course).

Clockwise from the top: fried with bacon, pine nuts and cheese; à l’orange; fried with red onion and balsamic vinegar; steamed and topped with butter

By far, the simplest to prepare and cook was the first – steamed with butter.  Sprouts à l’orange (recipe: http://bit.ly/fsI4p1) is a faff to prepare and, unfortunately, reconfirmed a long held prejudice against all things flavoured orange that aren’t actually an orange.  Fried with red onion and balsamic vinegar was quick and easy and tasted OKish too (as taste disguising goes) but the runaway success was fried with bacon, pine nuts and cheese.  But you probably knew that already, right?  Bacon, nuts and cheese = nom.   It was so good, that I didn’t even taste the sprouts!  Hang on, though.  What’s the point in going to the trouble of preparing and cooking the things if you can’t taste them..?

So, in conclusion: Many thanks to everyone who responded.  I had thought I might, maybe receive one interesting idea so to have choice was great.  It was fun trying them all out too.  And, thanks to you, I won’t be adding sprouts to our dislike list (there’s so much on there already that I worry that soon we’ll just be receiving potatoes, onions and carrots…) but if they turn up again I think I’ll probably just stick to steaming them.  They’re actually not bad like that.  But if I can’t overcome the sense that that’s just too boring, I’ll be turning to bacon, nuts and cheese to spice things up.

Spice, now there’s an idea…

Ingredients

• 3 oz gram flour
• 2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp mixed spice
• 4 tbps water
• 4 oz grated onion
• 4 oz grated potato
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 5 tbsp oil
• Kitchen roll

Method

1. Mix together the dry ingredients
2. Add the water to the dry ingredients and mix to a smooth batter
3. Stir the grated onion and potato into the batter
4. Stir in the sliced onion
5. Heat the oil
6. Gently drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot oil
7. Flip each bhajji over when the bottom side becomes golden brown
8. Once both sides of the bhajji are brown, remove it from the oil and place it on kitchen roll to soak off some of the oil

Result

Approximately 8 onion bhajjis (depending on how large you make them).

Bites is very simple recipe manager, in interface and functionality; beautifully quick and easy to use. What makes it special, though, for me, is its integration with OI Shopping List: at the press of a button in Bites, I can add all of the ingredients I need to my shopping list.

If I already have an ingredient, I can tick it off before I copy it across and only the ingredients I really need will be added. If, like me, you have more than one list set up in OI Shopping List, the process allows you to specify which one, exactly, the ingredients should be added to. Also, to help you remember why it’s essential that you buy black treacle this week, the name of the recipe it’s required for (fruit cake) is appended to each ingredient name in the Shopping List.

The only feature that I miss, from both apps, is the option to specify the name of an ingredient/item and the quantity required separately. I’ve requested this from both app makers and have my fingers crossed that it’ll be added in the New Year.

Christmas planning is going so much more smoothly with the help of these two apps (and RTM), though. Only a zillion things left to do..!