Cabbage Marathon

Okay, I promised to tell you about my cabbage marathon -- like you're waiting with bated breath to hear about it, right? Nod your head and mutter, "Yes." Thank you.

Where were we? Oh, yes -- I had mentioned being in possession of 2 1/2 heads of cabbage. I believe I also mentioned my brother and his wife were here for a 2-week visit. Before they closed up the lake house, they emptied the refrigerator and brought all the remaining food to me -- Old Hollow Leg -- so it wouldn't go to waste. Part of what they brought was 1 1/2 heads of cabbage -- and I already had 1 head. Of cabbage, I mean.

I don't care what anybody says, that's a lot of cabbage for one liddle ol' leddy. Two heads are not only better than one, they're way more. Not that I'm complaining, nope, nossiree. Cabbage is good. I love cabbage. Really. But, gee, how was I going to fix all this cabbage before it spoiled on me?

The first thing I did was to haul out my trusty little V-Slicer and shred every single bit of it. Such a pile of cabbage! Very impressive. I got four rather full quart-sized freezer bags right off the git-go. Then I made the 30-day salad I told you about yesterday. Then, with the remaining cabbage, I made the Grandmother of all veggie soups.

Took my next-to-biggest kettle -- which holds something like six-plus quarts -- and threw in the cabbage. Next came a couple of cups of lattice-cut carrots, a couple of cups of sliced zucchini, one large diced Walla Walla sweet onion, and most of a clump of celery. This might make you blink but it works for me -- I also tossed in a cup of very spicy-hot grape salsa which included cilantro and jalapeno. Didn't need any other seasoning after that. (Wiggling eyebrows wickedly.)

I had made cottage cheese with a quart of buttermilk so I drained off the whey into the pot. Then came, oh, I dunno, probably 6 cups of chicken broth and 1 can of V-8 juice. The last item to go into the pot was 1 cup of uncooked rice.

Brought all that to a boil, then turned it down and put a lid on it so it could cook slow until everything was tender. And it did. And everything was. I had a bowl for dinner and pronounced it sublime.

All of which is fine but it must be noted one bowl hardly makes a dent in that much soup. I was now faced with the logistical problem of portioning out all that good stuff for later consumption and -- lord have mercy -- finding room in the freezer to put it.

Well, if one excavates deeply enough, one can find assorted items that are so far past their Use-By date they could hail from the Jurassic period. I'm not sure how long that half-quart of ice cream has been in there but I think it had fossils in it. And there were all those packets of sauce that come with the frozen stir-fry veggies. I don't know why I save them because I like my own sauce better. Lots of space gained by tossing them.

After much diligent and fairly ruthless effort, I'm happy to report my freezer is now neatly rearranged and all the soup is safely stored and there is even a little room left over for more stuff. Heh, heh ... I'll think of something to cram in there.