Welcome to the Church of the Holy Cabbage. Lettuce pray. ~ Author Unknown

I love cabbage. I love it in coleslaw. I love it in soups, especially Minnestrone. I love stuffed cabbage leaves. I love sweet and sour red cabbage. Most people don't think of serving it as side vegetable, but I love cabbage just sautéed with a little salt and pepper. So obviously when I come across a new recipe that incorporates cabbage, you get my attention.

A couple of weeks ago, I was wandering around the internet looking for some inspiration and I found this dish at Melissa's Magic in the Kitchen, which she adapted from Allrecipes.

Like Melissa, I made several changes to the recipe to make it more suited to my tastes. I went to one of my favorite cookbooks, Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen, to get the flavor I wanted and I incorporated the spices for Chef Paul's Red Beans and Rice into this recipe. The recipe below incorporates my changes.

This recipe is hearty, flavorful, simple to prepare and makes A LOT !! Tom and I each had seconds and we still vacuum sealed and froze enough for two more dinners.

Cabbage Jambalaya
by Terri Powers for Terri's Table
adapted from Melissa's Magic in the Kitchen

1 pound ground beef
1 pound kielbasa, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium head green cabbage, chopped
1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes, drained well (I used diced tomatoes)
3 cups chicken stock
1 cup uncooked long grain white rice
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
1 teaspoon Emeril's Essence seasoning (or other Cajun-syle seasoning)
2 bay leaves
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
3 teaspoons pepper

To prepare this dish, use a large stock pot, dutch oven or other large pot with tight fitting lid.


Put the olive oil in the pot over medium high heat. Add the onion, celery and carrots and cook until the onion is slightly cooked. Add the garlic and cook for one minute more. Add the ground beef and cook until the beef is evenly brown, breaking it up into small pieces with the spoon as it cooks. Add the kielbasa slices, cabbage, tomatoes, chicken stock, rice and all the herbs and spices and stir well.


Bring contents to a boil and reduce the heat to low for a slow simmer. Cover the pot and cook for 35 to 40 minutes, or until rice is done. Adjust the seasoning if desired and serve.

"Life is a combination of magic and pasta." ~ Fellini

I love pasta so much that I used to think I was Italian in a previous life, reincarnated as a Norwegian/German/Russian Jew. How did that happen??

After Tom and I got married and when the kids were growing up, I think the only pasta I cooked was spaghetti and lasagna. They were economical, easy to prepare, filling and tasty. But, as the boys hit their teens, we began to venture out more, culinarily (is that even a word?) speaking. When I returned to the workforce in the late 70's and early 80's, Tom also started cooking more and Italian food, including pasta, is simple fare and easy to prepare. It was right up his alley.

One day at the mall, Tom came across this book.


It has been a treasured volume in our cookbook collection ever since.

The only recipe in this book that I have ever prepared is the Bolognese Sauce on page 12. This has been essentially Tom's cookbook and he has prepared the majority of the recipes and I can't think of one dish that we haven't really liked. A few of our favorites, though, are Penne with Sausage & Peas, Spaghetti alla Puttanesca and Spaghetti Carbonara.

I've been in kind of a funk lately. We've had so much rain, very little warm weather and basically dreary skies. Although temperatures have remained constant in the 60's and 70's and don't dip particularly low, I still feel like I need comfort food. Enter Spaghetti Carbonara. Bacon...and cheese...and eggs, oh my!

Granted, this is not a dish you would want to serve every week. It is loaded with fat and cholesterol. But eating this pasta is like putting on sweats and fuzzy socks and sitting by the fireplace on a cold winter day. It's that good.



When Tom cooks, he is usually faithful to the recipe. The only change he made to this recipe is the addition of a little cream. I have added that to the recipe, but in italics. The rest of the recipe original to the book.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara
(Spaghetti Charcoal Vendor's Style)
adapted from 99 Ways to Cook Pasta
by Flora and Robert Alda
2 eggs
1/4 cup heavy cream
pinch of salt
1 Tablespoon freshly grated parmigiano cheese
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 scallions, finely chopped
3/4 pound lean bacon, diced
1 pound spaghetti
1 Tablespoon salt
1 Tablespoon butter
1/4 pound parmigiano cheese, freshly grated
2 Tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper

In a small bowl, beat the eggs with a pinch of salt, 1 Tablespoon cheese and heavy cream. Set aside.

In a small skillet, heat the oil and lightly brown the scallions. Add the bacon and sauté until well done but not too crisp. Turn off the flame and let stand.

Cook the spaghetti in salted boiling water (only 1 Tablespoon salt is needed here) until a moment less than al dente. (You will be reheating it in a few minutes when you blend in the other ingredients.) Drain well. Melt the butter in the spaghetti pot over a low flame and return the spaghetti to the pot. Mix in the bacon and scallions and stirring well with a wooden fork and add the egg/cheese/cream mixture. Keep tossing constantly over a low flame while adding the 1/4 pound of cheese and the pepper. Within a couple of minutes, at the first sign of the eggs cooking and the sauce is thickening, the pasta will be done. Serve from the pot into warmed pasta bowls.

Serves 4 to 6.

I'm On a Roll... A Blogroll, that is!

I have been writing this food blog for almost a year now and I thought it was time to generate, hopefully, a little more interest. So, I am very excited that I have been added to the GREAT COOKS! Blogroll at Simple Daily Recipes. It is a site filled with wonderful recipes, cooking tips, great cooks community and more! You can visit their website by clicking the link above and you can visit the other food blogs by clicking the links on the blogroll on my sidebar. I hope you pay Jill and friends a visit.

I just love Chinese food. My favourite dish is number 27. ~ Clement Atlee

When we first moved out to the country to our 10-acre farm, there was very little there. We'd either have to drive to Little Rock or Conway to eat.

After several years, people starting spreading out from the cities and into the countryside to live. What followed was an influx of different places to shop and eat.

When we lived in California, we ate Chinese food often. It is one of our favorite types of food, but really good Chinese food is hard to get here. So, when a small Chinese drive-thru/eat in diner opened about 10 miles from our house we thought we'd at least give it a try. It was amazing! Everything was fresh and made on the premises. Nothing was overly sauced. We enjoyed meals from Dragon Express at least once a month.

Then we moved into Conway a year and a half ago. Jade China, a small restaurant in Conway which used to have pretty good food, was extremely disappointing the last two times we ate their food. The sauces were very heavy and the vegetables and meat were drowning. We tried another place. Same thing.

So I have been craving Chinese food, but the 45 minute drive back to Dragon Express seems a little far for Vegetable Egg Foo Yung. So when I came across Nic's posting for Cashew Chicken, I decided to try it, with some little changes of my own.

It was delicious. Light, just the right amount of sauce and very flavorful.

What follows is the recipe which includes the changes I made. You can see Nic's original recipe at the link above. I deleted the salt in her recipe because I used some oyster sauce, which is pretty salty. I also added mushrooms and onions instead of her bean sprouts. I wanted fresh bean sprouts, but they looked gross so I left them on the shelf and opted for mushrooms instead. Finally, rather than plain brown rice, I served it with Chinese Fried Rice made with cooked brown rice.

Cashew Chicken
adapted from "Nic in the Kitchen" by Terri Powers for Terri's Table

1 pound uncooked boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1-inch slices
3 medium stalks celery, cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces
1/2 of medium onion, cut into quarters, the layers separated and the layers cut into 1-inch slices
6 medium mushrooms, sliced
1 cup of dry-roasted cashews
2 cloves of garlic, minced fine
3 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1-1/2 cups chicken broth, divided into 1 cup and 1/2 cup portions
4 tablespoons peanut oil

Put the cornstarch into the 1/2 cup portion of the chicken broth, mix well to dissolve any lumps and set aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and cook for about 30 seconds, stirring constantly. Do not allow to brown. Add the chicken and stir-fry until cooked through, about 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the chicken to a plate.

Add the last 2 tablespoons of oil to the pan and heat. Add the celery and cook for about 1 minute. Add the onions to the celery and cook for about another 1 minute. Add the mushrooms to the celery and onions and cook for about 2 to 3 more minutes. The celery should still be just a little crunchy.

Add one cup of the chicken broth, then the soy sauce and oyster sauce to the pan. Stir the cornstarch/chicken broth mixture well, then add to the pan and stir quickly. Bring it all to a boil. When the sauce starts to thicken, add the chicken back into the pan. Then add the cashews. Mix well.

Serve over plain or Chinese Fried Rice.