Brussels Sprouts!

I ate them!!  And they weren't horrible!!  They were actually kind of good.

What brings this on?  I've been doing a lot of fitness and healthy food related reading lately.  The basics, I'm very aware of.  Calories in, calories burned, you are what you eat, etc...

And while some days I think I eat healthy, I'm a far cry from where I should be to get as healthy (fit and strong, not skinny) as I want to be.  So, I'm going to try changing that by eating more fresh foods and less packaged foods.  In order to do that, I need to experiment in cooking to find easy and tasty recipes using fresh foods.

I wandered through Whole Foods to get motivated.  But I left with little in my basket because I knew I could get everything I wanted for half the price at Sunflower Market.  I'm not sure what the deal is with Whole Foods.   Everything is a ridiculous price.  I'm looking to get healthy, not go broke.

I picked up brussels sprouts, peppers, bananas, lettuce, grape tomatoes, and various other healthy stuff.  I was pleased with my purchases and motivated to get started using them!

The first recipe attempted was pretty easy to follow.  I heated a little olive oil in a pan and browned up the sprouts after halving them.  That took about five minutes.

Then I put them in my cute little baking dish and popped them in the oven to caramelize.  (Fancy words, folks.)  375 degrees for 20 minutes.

While the sprouts did their thing, I toasted some sliced almonds.

After 20 minutes, I pulled out the sprouts and added the almonds, a handful of raisins, and a sprinkling of kosher salt (I picked up some of that too).

Pre-mixing.  There are some brussels sprouts under there!

The end result was pretty tasty.  I did polish off the entire serving.  I'd say that was about a cup and a half to two cups of brussels sprouts.  That's about 80 calories.  Plus the added goodies and I'd say it was roughly 200 calories of goodness.  Not bad.

Things I've learned about brussels sprouts... very low in calories, high in fiber, cheap, a good source of those magical Omega-3 fatty acids, and they help fight cancer by eliminating inflammation.  Inflammation of what, I don't know.  I'm not an expert.