Leftovers: Golumpki Meatballs

So you open the fridge and there is a pound package of hamburger that's a couple days old. Oxidation has begun to make it look less appealing ...

Hmm. There's the leftover rice from two days ago when you made chicken piccata. Half a yellow onion lingers in a storage bag. Out in the garden, the stumps of three harvested cabbages still have big blue leaves living and waiting for someone to love them.

A couple months ago, I watched a food show in which some man threw his meatloaf ingredients into a stand mixer. Why not let the Red Lady Kitchen Aid stand mixer do all the dirty work? Throwing the meat, an egg, and the rice into the mixing bowl, I flipped the switch, and off she went, effortlessly and evenly mixing the ingredients. Why did I never think of this before?

Salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder.

The big blue leaves of the cabbage -- and a few outer leaves from a Napa cabbage in the back yard planting -- got wilted in a frying pan filled with boiling water. Into the Cuisinart food processor those leaves went, with the leftover yellow onion and a couple cloves of garlic left over from a salsa construction the day before. (Shh, I stole about three heaping tablespoons of Bernie's salsa and threw that in with the meat, egg, and rice mixture, too.) Having chopped to hell and back the cabbage leaves, onion, and garlic, I mixed those in with the rest. Go Red Lady, go.

I could have cooked the meatballs in the oven for three hours, but instead I placed them into a pressure cooker, with a can of tomato sauce dumped over them: 8 minutes at 15 pounds pressure. Cool off the burner for five more minutes, then cool the pressure cooker until the lid is safe to open under cool running water.

Then I walked away until later in the evening, when I carefully scooped the meatballs out and put them in storage containers for today's meal. Not only do they taste better the second day, but they're a lot easier to handle when they're cool. When they're hot, they fall apart. All the liquid from the pressure cooker went into a separate container.

That was yesterday. Today, I gently reheated the meatballs in the microwave on a low setting while I made fresh potatoes for mashed potatoes, and heated the reserved juice after adding a tablespoon of corn starch to thicken it just a little. (Flour works, too.)

Oh, yeah. Who'd have thought leftovers and discards could taste so good?

P.S. Don't forget the ketchup drizzled across the meatballs. You just would not believe how good that is.

Morning in the 2017 Fall Garden

I haven't been very successful at growing cabbage in the garden -- up until now.

Last year I tried purple cabbage, and some of them looked gorgeous, (but not all) and the flavor was a little astringent for my tastes. This year is green, and they are simply breath-taking.

The cabbage you buy in the store is round and light green, but I can attest from experience that those big blue leaves make a wonderful golumpki. I used to buy whole cabbages untrimmed when we lived back East, and freeze some of those big leaves for winter cabbage rolls. I look at these plants and see not only golumpki, but blue leaves for stir-fry, and for fried cabbage with onion as well.

Years roll by more quickly all the time, so this morning, I decided to take portraits of my current garden so I remember what worked, and how beautiful vegetables can be. The full set of portraits can be seen in my Flickr account, Palmprint Gallery.

This morning was also our first foggy morning, dressing the garden in wispy whiteness. My pictures were taken just after the fog lifted.