Sneak in some veggies with cabbage in this Sloppy Joe mix

In yesterday’s Easter-egg hunt one of the best places to hide eggs was in the bulb of the emerging cabbage plants in the garden. As I studied the cabbage rows, I dreamed of the day a few weeks from now when we’d be hauling our own cabbage crop into the kitchen for one of my absolute fave dishes, Cabbage Sloppy Joes.

Almost immediately after I began planning my most recent cookbook, Way Back in the Country Garden, I lined up Cabbage Sloppy Joes as one of my first recipes to include. Instructions involve adding finely shredded cabbage to some of the traditional sloppy joe ingredients. We sub ground turkey for ground beef. The addition of the cabbage plus a dab of brown sugar adds a sweet taste to the end-product.

In our most recent batch Hubby got the food-prep assignment since I wasn’t home from babysitting Grandmunchkin yet. He decided to put the cabbage through the food-processor to make it chop even more finely. When I arrived home and he had dinner on the table, I was shocked to realize it was Cabbage Sloppy Joes, because I didn’t recognize it without the decipherable shredded cabbage. He told me about his experiment of pulverizing the cabbage even more finely in the processor. Sure enough, same great flavor plus a smoother texture. He said next time he’d shred the onion, green pepper, and celery in the mix as well and add to the smooth consistency.

With hot summer evenings on their way, this meal represents a perfect way to avoid oven cooking and to stick with the stovetop to keep the kitchen cool. In case the idea of cabbage gets a yuk from family members, you can sneak some veggies down them by serving this delicious cover-up.

Cabbage Sloppy Joes

1 pound ground beef or ground turkey

1 1/2 cups finely shredded cabbage

1 medium onion, chopped

1 celery rib, chopped

1/4 cup chopped green pepper

1 cup ketchup (we use the no-salt variety)

3 tablespoons brown sugar (or brown-sugar substitute)

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon prepared mustard

1 teaspoon salt (or salt substitute)

dash pepper

8 sandwich rolls, split

In a large skillet cook the ground beef (or turkey), cabbage, onion, celery, and green pepper over medium heat until meat no longer is pink and vegetables are crisp-tender. Drain. Stir in the ketchup, brown sugar, lemon juice, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, salt, and pepper. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until cabbage is tender. Spoon 1/2 cup onto each roll. Makes 8 servings.

Kid-friendly sloppy joe mix helps sneak veggies past the unsuspecting

OK, here it is, friends--the recipe I've been mentioning for the past several blogs. Wonderful- tasting, quick, ample--and best of all, a way to sneak veggies down the unsuspecting (aka, kids).

The recipe for Cabbage Sloppy Joes was like so many of the others--discovered in desperation when Hubby, a few years back, brought in from our garden more heads of cabbage than we could even get our minds around.

I began hunting (yes, Internet searches help immensely at such times) for offbeat uses for this bounty. That's when I found the instructions for cooking Cabbage Sloppy Joes. Whoever would have thought? The author of the recipe mentioned that the cabbage gave the mixture a slightly sweet taste and of course made it more full-bodied than was the average means of preparing sloppy joes, to be served over buns.

The addition of brown sugar, ketchup, lemon juice, and mustard make a nice sauce to wind around the browned ground turkey and tender cabbage. Other than chopping and shredding the cabbage, enough to make 1 1/2 cups, you can make quick work of this on-the-table-fast dish. Earlier this week a friend was on hand to help me get this recipe pulled together (I'm cooking and freezing some meals to take to our little expectant couple when they bring our grandson into the world later this month; my friend was helping me with this assembly-line enterprise.) She was absolutely incredulous at how quick this meal materialized. I knew she also was thinking the same thing that drew me to Cabbage Sloppy Joes--this is something her kids might like.

Every summer at cabbage time, I always start salivating for Cabbage Sloppy Joes (recipe also found in my new cookbook, Way Back in the Country Garden) and know that they are only a few days around the corner. Throw a few carrot sticks and a few grapes on the plate, and it's a summertime, don't-have-to-heat-up the kitchen meal that will stick in your memory for a long time.

Cabbage Sloppy Joes

1 pound ground beef or ground turkey

1 1/2 cups finely shredded cabbage

1 medium onion, chopped

1 celery rib, chopped

1/4 cup chopped green pepper

1 cup ketchup (we use the no-salt variety)

3 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon prepared mustard

1 teaspoon salt (we use salt substitute)

dash pepper

8 buns, split

In large skillet cook the ground beef (or turkey), shredded cabbage, onion, celery, and green pepper over medium heat until meat no longer is pink and vegetables are crisp-tender. Drain. Stir in the ketchup, brown sugar, lemon juice, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, salt, and pepper. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until cabbage is tender. Spoon 1/2 cup onto each roll. Makes 8 servings.

"Oui oui!" to French Cabbage, a most unusual but flavorful use of this summer veggie

I've never known what was French about it, but the French Cabbage recipe featured here is one to which we definitely say "Oui! Oui!"

I turned it up a few years back when our garden produced row after row of cabbage. I was desperate to find recipes that would incorporate the vegetable beyond the basic "boiled cabbage on the stovetop" routine.

Enter the Birchman cookbook, or as members of my family would teasingly mock me, "The Birch-man Cook-book", repeated in a singsong fashion. They did this because seemingly every dish I put on the table, for months and months on end, had its origin in this outstanding church cookbook that included one of the best recipe collections I've ever run across in a cookbook that was not commercially produced.

As, working my way through the cookbook I prepared the recipes, compliments abounded from those I served. "The Birch-man Cook-book", I'd reply to make sure proper credit was due. Pretty soon my family members turned this into a tease. "The Birch-man Cook-book," they'd reply. Thank you, Birchman Baptist Church in Fort Worth, for being a goldmine of excellent recipes then and now.

One of those, of course, was this one for French Cabbage. Our cabbage rows definitely weren't as prolific this year as they were in the one when we first began preparing this recipe, but I had several heads left in my refrigerator. (The final one went for Cabbage Sloppy Joes, which I'll feature in an upcoming blog.)

This makes a great, unusual, and colorful combination for a bring-a-dish buffet or potluck. People will be blown away when you tell them that cabbage is the main ingredient.

French Cabbage

1 medium cabbage

1 to 2 small bell peppers, chopped

3 to 4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon butter

3/4 cup celery, chopped fine

1 cup whole milk (can use skim)

1 cup grated Cheddar cheese

salt and pepper to taste

toasted bread crumbs

Quarter cabbage and cook in small amount of water until tender; drain and chop fine. Cook celery, peppers, and garlic in butter until tender. Add to cabbage. Pour in cream and grated cheese. Mix well and place in a 9-by-9-inch dish. Put bread crumbs on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

A healthy, tasty dinner from veggies left in the refrigerator, freezer, and garden

We're not sure who Kathy is, but we'd sure like to thank her from the bottom of our hearts.

Her recipe, entitled "Kathy's Stir Fry", certainly delivered up for us a delicious dinner that was one of the biggest potpourris of garden veggies I've ever experienced.

And the best part about it was the line on the recipe, "Any vegetable may be omitted or substituted as desired."

That gave me a green light to look in my refrigerator and see what veggies were about to be on their last leg if I didn't use them soon. Solution: since Kathy says this is OK, I simply pull them off the shelves, chop, and stir in.

So, at the place in which she said to add asparagus, I subbed carrots, plus I threw in some chopped celery that was close to looking on the haggard side. Instead of regular onion I threw in the remainder of a red onion that was about to go limp on me. How virtuous I felt to be able to perform these rescue operations! Her recipe even called for 3/4 cup of frozen green peas (a recent Prevention magazine discussed the health benefits of frozen veggies and urged us not to be such "fresh" purists that we disregard the frozen-food aisle, especially when a shopper is pinching pennies.) I was happy to toss in those green peas, whose shelf life soon would be questionable as well.

"Kathy's Stir Fry" was one of my recipes from the Chickasaw Nutrition Services (I've just about made my way through cooking my latest collection of these treasured recipe cards that I obtain any time my hubby, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation (tribe), visits Ardmore, OK, for a health exam. I look forward to another trip to Ardmore a few weeks from now so I can round up a few new cooking ideas.)

The Chickasaws are absolutely DETERMINED to improve the health conditions of their people--to reverse a downward spiral into diabetes, obesity, and other woes (that plague the general U.S. population as well.) These handy recipe cards the Chickasaw's Nutrition Services centers make available free to their people underscore the message over and over again: you CAN cook for your family the fresh way; you CAN make perfectly wonderful meals without adding things that cause ills. (For example, unlike a typical stir-fry recipe, "Kathy's Stir Fry" was amazingly good without the addition of any soy sauce, which usually boosts the sodium content of a recipe sky-high.)

The nutrition information for "Kathy's Stir Fry" read: 80 calories, 3 g fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 45 g sodium, 10 g carbohydrates, 3 g fiber. You can't beat that! (Serving the stir-fried veggies over brown rice, which the recipe suggests, alters those counts a little but adds some wonderful fiber to an already fiber-ific menu item.)

Most fun of all, the requested 3 cups of cabbage gave me a reason for traipsing out to my garden, cutting off a fresh cabbage head, and instantly adding it to the sizzling skillet for last night's dinner. When a meal necessitates that kind of activity, the joy of gardening and growing one's own food is complete. My hubby, on the road yesterday for an errand, returned home to lift the lid on the skillet and find a colorful melange of edible health just waiting for him.

Thank you, Kathy. Wherever--and whoever--you are, keep up the good work. I hope to see your name on some more of my Chickasaw recipe cards in the near future.

Kathy's Stir Fry

2 tablespoons olive oil

3/4 cup onion, diced

1/2 cup red bell pepper, diced

1/2 cup green bell pepper, diced

2 1/2 cups zucchini, sliced

2 1/2 cups yellow squash, sliced

2 cups broccoli

1 1/2 cups asparagus, fresh, sliced

2 teaspoons oregano

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 garlic cloves, minced

3/4 cup green peas, frozen

Heat nonstick skillet on high heat until skillet is hot. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Saute onions and red and green bell peppers for about 2 minutes. Add zucchini and squash; cook about 2 more minutes. Add broccoli, asparagus, and cabbage to skillet. Add oregano, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and garlic to vegetables. Continue to cook until broccoli is crisp-tender (about 4 minutes). Add peas. May be served with whole-grain (brown) rice. Makes 10 1-cup servings.