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The Veggie of the Week Challenge
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In case you missed last week, this’ll catch you up:
In short, cooking went on the back, back burner, while I published my first book, TROUBLE WITH PARSNIPS, so dinner was unimaginative for a few months.
By the way, I got to see the hardcover for the first time today! Yippeeeee!
*cough* Writer folk are easily distracted from the important work of feeding people.
Hence the Challenge:
—No recipes will appear here in their entirety.
—No holds barred. If the crew orders out for pizza, you’ll get the details here.
—At least one inexpensive vegetable must appear in the meal. (Honor of an epidemiologist!)
—Half-way healthy. An attempt at lower fat and whole grains will be made, but cream and cheese will inevitably appear. You’ve been warned.
Without further ado, this week’s vegetable is:
Tendersweet Cabbage
The grocery store had a variety called “Jaroma” that’s supposed to have a less “cabbage-y” odor. Not sure we noticed the difference, but the shape was like the Tendersweet. Another milder variety of green cabbage is the “point-y” one. (“Murdoc” looks like a 1920’s skirt, very flirty for a cabbage.)
The stir fry is very simple: onion, a generous hunk of fresh ginger, chopped, a few garlic cloves with the center sprout removed, 3 sausages, sliced thin and 2 carrots. When that looks sautéed, I add 1/2 a cabbage, sliced and chopped through a few times in the other direction, turn the heat down and let the cabbage slowly melt into tenderness.
A little cornstarch dissolved in cold water with the healthiest bouillon cube I could find made the sauce. 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper added a bit of zip.
Half-way healthy: I like to “cancel out” the sausage with cabbage family vegetables and I slice the sausage as thin as possible to get the flavor. Brown rice balances this stir-fry nicely.
Cheap: The cabbage was on sale for under $2 and I only used half. If you were cooking for a mob, you could use the whole thing with another carrot and onion for balance. I froze the rest of the sausages in the package.
Vote: Thumbs up! “It would have been too sweet without the brown rice.”
