Years ago, the husband of one of my sister’s friends was riding his bicycle on a deserted roadway near Eugene, Oregon. Something went awry, and the bicycle catapulted him into the top of a blackberry bramble while the bicycle itself disappeared into the brush, leaving no trace of anything amiss.
The poor guy was stuck in the top of the blackberry thicket for hours on end. There was no way for him to get down, and no one heard his desperate cries for help. Somehow he was finally found and rushed to the nearest hospital. He was in bad shape. He was terribly sunburned and dehydrated, and he was also suffering poisoning from all the blackberry thorns that had bitten into his skin.
His wife told my sister later that the whole time she was in the hospital waiting room, she kept praying that he wouldn’t die. “When people ask me what happened,” she said, “I didn’t want to have to say that my husband died of blackberries.”
So this week, Bill cooked an amazing dish—brussels sprouts covered with a baked crispy cheese topping. If you’re looking for a low carb dish, brussels sprouts and cheese can’t be beat.
I had downed several of those tasty little morsels when one of them went down the wrong way and stayed there. The interesting thing about brussels sprouts is that they come apart in layers. So sometimes I couldn’t breathe and then sometimes when the little layers slipped just the right way, I could, but only by making very peculiar and alarming sounds. The dogs didn’t like it at all.
Eventually, I managed to cough it loose in a very unladylike, layer by layer manner.
I can tell you that by the time it was over, Bill was very grateful that I was still alive and breathing for any number of reasons, one of which was not having to explain to the cops and to my fans that I died of brussels sprouts.