Sunday, August 6, 2006

From the Ground to the Table

I have no vegetable garden and yet I have more fresh veggies than I can eat.

Veggie gardeners are very generous people. This week I have cabbage and redskins from my Dad, cukes from him and two other people, and tomatoes from my MIL. This morning I decided to turn that head of cabbage into many, many meals.

This is my Dad's garden. You would be hard pressed to find a weed in the whole garden. And look at that huge hedge that hides the garden from the house. Years ago he dug the cedar from a friend's cow pasture...imagine that!



Anyway back to my cooking..........I decided to make cabbage/hamburger/rice casserole. It's like stuffed cabbage, only the cabbage is shredded instead of stuffed. DH likes cabbage like that.

Since I will have a big mess to clean up, I decided I might as well make a lot (I am an avid multi-tasker). With 2.5 pounds of ground chuck, I decided I had enough to make three casseroles.
I will freeze two of them. In mid-December I am sure one of the casseroles will be very tasty and will remind me of the summer garden.

I don't have a recipe, but here are the step-by-step pictures of what I did (I wanted to remember just how I made it, so I can repeat it at a later date.) Most recipes I see use only tomato soup, which I find boring on it's own. I added beef broth (instead of water), vinegar and brown sugar. The vinegar gives it a little zing.


After I finished the 3 casseroles, I made parsley-buttered redskins.


I can hardly wait for dinner!

While we are on the subject of PB redskins, let me share my big pet peeve about them. . . I hate getting them at a restaurant when they are served in big chunks - like only cut in half. Our cooks at work do it all the time. I guess they find it too labor intensive to cut them into bite-size pieces.

If you cut them into tiny pieces, the ratio of flesh to skin is increased. With more flesh exposed more butter is absorbed into each bite. So if you like butter, they really do taste better if they are cut smaller! At least that's my theory...I have really never heard any professional chef mention it...

8 comments:

  1. This is kinda like a collage!
    Your dad is something else. If he saw our veggie patch, he would faint. I plan to go out and pull up the beans because they are too hidden by the weeds to try and pick them anymore. I try to get my DH to do the lasagna method like Kasmira, but he just keeps sowing weed seeds when he digs them under with the rototiller.
    Everything looks scrumptious-I love red potatoes too!

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  2. Set another plate, I'm comin' over for dinner!! Looks soooo delicious! What you made reminds me of the Lazy Man's Cabbage Rolls that I make:-) Your dad's garden looks great, ours is like a jungle, everything grew so much!!

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  3. Very good looking meal I love cabbage but seldom have it I'm the only one in my family that will eat it too bad I don't live closer I could come and join you.:)

    Your dad's garden looks great. What kind of soil do you all have in the picture it looks kind of sandy. It looks very different from ours.

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  4. Uh oh, now I'm hungry. We had a late lunch today, but it's wearing off. Time to go make dinner I guess.

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  5. Zoey,
    I love the idea of shredding the cabbage for this casserole. It looks like something we'd both enjoy. At the produce stand I mentioned in my last post, the head of cabbage (close to 4# each ) were 50 cents! What a bargain!!!

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  6. Dianne, Picasa calls it a collage.

    Pea, that is exactly what they are.

    Karen, I hope you enjoyed whatever you had for your dinner.

    Mom, I am not ready for any more yet! They are coming faster than I can eat them!

    Sue, with prices like that I can see why many people don't bother going to all the trouble to grow their on veggies. I like to go to our local farmer's market, too. I will go there soon to get corn (Dad does not grow corn anymore).

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  7. Zoeysmom, thats the best kind:)

    I envy people that have good soil ours in the summer gets like concrete.

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  8. What time is supper?...I'll be right over, just keep my plate hot in the oven til I get there. I may be a little late if I leave the house right now.

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