But when I was working for Organic Gardening magazine, I started keeping an organic garden, and even planted some Brussels sprouts, just to familiarize myself with growing them. To my delight, they were delicious cooked right from the garden—as most food is. But the best sprouts were those I picked one snowy day in early December. I went to the garden, brushed the new snow off the big, bug-chewed leaves at the top of the plant, and twisted off a meal’s worth of small sprouts from near the top of the stalk. I prepared them by boiling them first and finishing them quickly in a skillet with olive oil and garlic, and I discovered then how sweet these little cabbage heads can be. I learned then that the fresher and smaller the sprout, the sweeter and more tender it will be. In retrospect, Mom’s problem was simple: Her store-bought sprouts were large and over the hill. The variety she got at the store was probably a packers’ variety, of inferior flavor but bred to mature all at once at a uniform size, instead of a home gardeners’ variety that matures from the bottom of the stalk up, increasing in size as they mature so many different sizes are available on the stalks at once