The joy of cabbage

Before I started CSAing this is what I associated with cabbage.

1. My favorite doll when I was young was a cabbage patch kid. Man did I love that doll. Mine had red hair and Little J's had yellow. She used to try to steal mine and call it hers. I remember that it owned clothes but it never wore them. I think she was just like this:
















2. Coleslaw and a bucket of chicken. When I was growing up my family had a boat. We used always get a bucket of Mrs. Winner's chicken with mashed potatoes, biscuits, gravy, and coleslaw and eat it on the lake. I didn't much care for the chicken, coleslaw, or mashed potatoes but man I loved the biscuits and gravy (this is a deep insight into my food psyche) and going to the lake. Tubing and eating biscuits are happy childhood memories for me.

So, you can see I didn't grow up in a cabbage loving family.

Now that I tried to be more educated in my food I have learned to tolerate enjoy cabbage.

Here is what I have learned about cabbage:

1. It is amazingly versatile. You can it raw or cooked. It has a mild flavor that be added to lots of different dishes.

2. It is cheap. I think around St. Patrick's day (cabbage's day to really shine.) I got it around $.19 a pound. And now St. Patty's day has passed it's still pretty cost effective.

3. It is very low in calories. Green cabbage has 22 calories in a cup. A whole cup for 22 calories! That must be why there is a whole diet dedicated to it (the cabbage soup diet.)

4. It comes in a whole slew of varieties. I think we've only had green and white cabbage but I'm sure purple would be delish too.

5. It stays good in the fridge for a long time. I'm embarrassed to tell you how long it's hung around my crisper but I can assure you it's hardy.

A couple of tips:

1. Always remove the core. It's just not enjoyable at all and it's really hard to chop. Simply cut up into the cabbage around the core and pull out.

2. Stray away from crock potting it. I've tried a couple of different recipes and unless you are making the cabbage soup from the cabbage soup diet I think the crockpot destroys it.

If you are leery start out stir frying it. Just chop it up to bite sized pieces and stir fry with onion in oil. Once it's just about cooked add Asian salad dressing, and if you are on omnivore, and chicken. Serve with rice. Easy and tasty.

If you want to be more daring here are our favorites:

1. Cabbage rolls.

2. Asian Salad.

3. Moo-shu chicken.

4. Homemade egg rolls. (I baked these in the oven instead of frying them. They were very good that way.)