Creamed Cabbage

I get it.  Not everyone likes cabbage.  It kind of smells weird, and it sometimes squeaks when you chew it.  And some will say that it can give you unpleasant side effects, which also may smell weird.  I had a friend once laugh that there was a plant called "skunk cabbage", because, as he put it, "All cabbage stinks!".  But I love a good underdog, and I'm going to tell you that cabbage can be more than a stinky side dish.  When you give it a bit of toasting and then boil it with some cream, it goes from cringe-worthy to crave-worthy.

Take a half head of cabbage (a whole cabbage if it's small) and remove the outer leaves.  Then trim down the stem.  You want to keep a good amount of the stem, because that's what's going to hold each piece together.  Cut the cabbage into wedges from the stem, making each wedge about 2-3 inches at the thickest part, keeping the stem as part of each wedge to keep it together.  You want about 5-6 wedges total.

Soup or Salad? Why Not Both?

If you read my CSA post for this week, you know that I said I had a TON of lettuce in our share.  I may have been exaggerating.  It was not an actual ton of lettuce.  That would have been crazy.  But it was a huge amount of lettuce.  Just over a pound of lettuce leaves.  Which may not sound like a lot, but after serving salad to my family of 5 twice and still having more than half the bag left, I realized that a pound is quite a bit of lettuce.

So, what to do with an excess of lettuce?  It doesn't keep forever, and it doesn't freeze well.  But, surprisingly, it does make a delicious soup.

Pavlovian Response

If there's one thing I love (besides my family, of course), it's a good dessert.  And pavlova is not just a good dessert, it's an amazingly delicious dessert!  It's also fairly easy to make, although you need to start a day ahead, and hugely impressive.

Boozy Cream Pie

Okay, so originally, this recipe from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, was called "Rum Cream Pie".  Which was as delicious and amazing as it sounds, and the first time I made it, it spurred our culinary imaginations.  What other liquor could we use in it?  Limoncello, like a frothy lemon cream?  Amaretto?  Irish Cream?  Any number of those fancy flavored vodkas?  The possibilities seem endless!

This pie doesn't take long to throw together, but you need to be ready to commit to a solid 10-15 minutes getting it ready, and then 4-6 hours chill time in the fridge.