Despised broccoli as a kid even when mom added a delicious cheese sauce. Today, I have it five days a week, from store-bought frozen package, straight into microwave, no cheese sauce, just a little salt. Go figure. BUT, it has to be florets, not spears, not cuts.
I like the spears (if you mean the stalks.) They are better if you peel them and then slice them thinly. I'll eat the whole head, not just break off the florets. I won't bother making a cheese sauce for broccoli, but when I make mac & cheese, sometimes I'll throw steamed broccoli in with it, so that I'm sorta having Broccoli in Cheese Sauce With Pasta. I'll often not use all the macaroni that's in the box because there's not enough sauce for the broccoli and all that pasta.
Cheese sauce is so easy to make; I usually serve it on broccoli. I also love broccoli cheese soup and I just happen to have a head of fresh broccoli in the fridge. Hmmmm.
I grow a LOT of broccoli and eat all of it, stalks and all. I can't use cheese sauce, as my wife can't deal with dairy, so it is served with fake butter or mustard sauce. I also sell the plants and always sell out, so someone must like it. We eat a lot of veggies in the summer and fall when we have them fresh from the garden, and squash, carrots, onions, beets and garlic that store just fine. Of course there is also canned and frozen stuff.
My neighbors have a veggie garden every year. I have a roto-tiller attachment for my tractor so I'll hook it up, drive over and save them some time. They always hook me up with some veggies. They grow broccoli, among other things. One year they brought me over a couple of big bags of broccoli greens. I had never heard of such a thing. They were good!!! I cooked half of them down as you would any green. I heated some oil, threw in some red pepper flakes to flavor it, washed & tore up the greens, tossed them in the pan, added salt & pepper, put on the lid, and let them cook down. Just before they were finished I added the slightest pinch of sugar just to take the edge off. I added the other half to a fresh batch of ham & navy bean soup.
Gotcha. I don't think so, Don. I think it's another version of Waste Not/Want Not, like eating many of the other greens is (like turnip greens.) You do some gardening. You ever eat broccoli greens?
Not the greens, but we do eat the stems once they are peeled. We have lots of greens around early in the season, but once broccoli is being harvested, there are so many other things to eat that we just compost the leaves. We used to speed up the composting by feeding them to the goats, but we no longer have livestock as I can't do the heavy lifting any more. We also continue to harvest side shoots until frost.