Bubble and Squeak Revisited

That was really, really good. {licks lips}

Ok, it's depressing when it doesn't seem to want to stop raining. There are things I need to get done, but doing anything out there is out of question. The potatoes we planted are probably rotting in the ground. Aaaarrrgh.

Oh well. *sigh* Maybe some tidying, eh? I mean, when we get lax and don't put things we've used back where they belong, they inevitably wind up just being put on the table. Yep. So before long, the dining table is pretty much just a mound of "stuff." So today I put the stuff away. In my travels around the table, I picked up a grocery bag hanging from a chair. What's in here, I wondered. Why, it's a big ol' cabbage. And then I remembered, focussing my post-menopausal mind on several days ago when I bought this cabbage, because the family said they'd like me to make cabbage rolls. I'd picked out a nice big cabbage at the grocery store, brought it home, hung it on the chair, and promptly forgot about the whole project.

Well, as luck would have it, I had a large package of naturally grown beef thawing in the refrigerator. I was thinking meatballs and pasta, but when I found the cabbage, I went into cabbage roll mode.

Ok, I made those for the family. They aren't anything unusual. Just your basic cabbage rolls. You blanche the cabbage leaves. In a large bowl you mix ground meat, a beaten egg, a 1/2 cup of milk (soy milk here), about a cup of cooked rice (Uncle Ben's brown rice at our house), some Worcestershire sauce, chopped onion, salt and pepper. Mix this all up. Cut the hard vein out of the cabbage leaves, fold and fill with meat mixture, then roll 'em up and place in a baking pan. The sauce is tomato soup or sauce with a little brown sugar and lemon juice. You pour that over them, then you put them in a 350 degree oven and cook for about an hour, remembering to "baste" now and then. The fam loved 'em. These ones are leftovers for Hubby's lunch.

But more to the point, at least for me, is the gluten-free, vegan meal I made for myself afterwards. I had some leftover blanched cabbage, some leftover boiled potato from another day, and some mushrooms that needed to be used up. Ok then. I remember my mom making patties out of leftover cabbage and potato. She fried this up and called it "bubble and squeak." She put an egg in with it though to bind the patties, and I can't have egg.

So a variation on the theme: I put the mushrooms and cut up potato in a lightly oiled pan and browned 'em up. Then I added chopped onion, zucchini, red pepper, celery, some chic peas, a bit of garlic and thin sliced cabbage. I sprinkled in some pepper, Tex/Mex spice, a couple squirts of Tamari sauce, stirred it around and lidded it for a bit. Served it up in a pasta bowl and my, was that ever good! :)

Didn't miss those cabbage rolls at all. Honestly. :)

NOTE: The cabbage rolls were dairy-free, but not gluten-free. But you could easily make this adjustment simply by using a gluten-free condensed tomato soup or tomato sauce and a g-free sauce, such as Tamari sauce, in place of the Worchestershire sauce. As long as you can have eggs and ground meat, you're laughin'. :)