What to do with a cabbage?

About a week ago, I impulse bought a cabbage. Some people impulse buy shoes, clothing, or jewelry, I impulse buy vegetables. Go figure.

Anyhow, the cabbage sat in our fridge for a week or so with Matt asking every couple of days, "What are you going to do with that cabbage?" to which I answered, "I haven't decided yet."

I know that cabbage lasts a long time but I knew it wouldn't last forever. So I looked in my cookbooks for a cabbage recipe that sounded palatable. So many of them had odd ingredients or just sounded icky. Eventually I found a recipe that sounded good in a Depression era cookbook. Cabbage casserole: ground beef, onions, cabbage, tomato chucks, and rice, all baked together in the oven. The recipe said two hours but our oven is slow, so it took more like three hours. It was very yummy but there was one downfall: it makes a ton!!!! There is no way that Matt and I can eat all that cabbage and still be welcomed in public!

So what to do with the 2 1/2 quart dish full of cabbage casserole? Matt said that he thought it would make wonderful pasty filling. Pasties (pronounced pAAsties) are meat and veggie pies associated with Cornish miners who moved to this area for the lead mining. You can buy them frozen in the grocery store. I thought about it and I agree with Matt, it would make good pasty filling. However we have so much filling, it is going to make multiple pasties.

After deliberating for a bit, I'm going to make the pasties but freeze them. The filling is all cooked and pie dough freezes, so why not? We'll see how this works! This is the benefit of only working part time (I'm subbing some but not five days a week!) So I have time to make pasties. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Matt's Owwiey and Misc.

This summer Matt hurt his back and needed to ice it. But he wanted to keep working. So we came up with this arrangement....

Yes, that's a pair of my hose holding an ice bag on his back. It worked quite well and you can see from the location of the ice that it was difficult to hold ice there well any other way. I thought it was quite clever of us to come up with this arrangement.

And now for an action shot....

For Christmas, Matt received the ingredients for sushi. Now, I know that some of you (Mom) are probably thinking "Yuck, sushi??!??," but it's really good as long as it's not made with raw fish. We are more California roll people than anything else. So here is a picture of the sushi that Matt made one night for dinner.

Don't worry, it's imitation crab, avocado, and rice wrapped in nori. Yumm!!! It is all gone!!!!!!

We also made peanut curry chicken soup. Yummmmmy

(But I don't think that soup photographs well. It was much yummier than this picture would imply.)

A berry good time

A riddle:

My hands are stained but my teeth aren't.
I have bramble scratches on my arms.
I'm dreaming of toast and pancakes.

What am I?

I'm Merrilee after picking wild blackberries!!!!

Matt and I picked, are you ready for it? You might want to sit down.

12 cups of berries last night.
12!!
From wild bushes growing along side the road.
12!!!
I'm in shock.

We added that to the berries we picked previously and now we have about 21 cups of berries total. Just from the last week! They are all in the freezer which is a little full right now!

We're thinking blackberry jelly and blackberry syrup. Yum!

We left quite a few on the bushes for the birds and wildlife because we don't have to have the berries to live. We can go the grocery store for food. There isn't a grocery store for birds, although designing one would be really cool. Little shopping carts for birds and aisles of different bird seed and suet types..... Ok, I need a life.