title: A sweet and savory cabbage recipe date: 2014-05-24 13:18 author: Christine Lemmer-Webber tags: recipe, diet, cabbage slug: sweet-savory-cabbage ---

There's plenty of interesting things to talk about lately, and I'll get to them soon. I'm on something I've titled "research-cation" where I'm still kind of working, but it's also kind of like vacation, but really I'm mostly working on doing research for MediaGoblin's future.

In the meanwhile, I'm back in diet mode, basically because the MediaGoblin campaign was hard on my health. But also, the tooling I had in orgmode was never that great, so I've revamped org-diet. I might write a separate post on this... there's a lot of reasons why I did the revamp (it's not in master yet, but in the date-tree branch). I'm now doing daily uploads of my current health status which you can view here (yes, org-diet now is super flexible about generating reports).

I'm not going into details on that in this post, but I did recently just re-make one of my favorite recipes of all time with a number of adjustments. I forgot just how good it is. Anyway, here it is:

Ingredients | Calories | Quantity | Total
--- | --- | --- | ---
head cabbage | 290 | 1 | 290
tbsp olive oil | 119 | 1 | 119
Westsoy baked tofu square | 90 | 4 | 360
medium onion | 44 | 1 | 44
can kidney beans | 385 | 1 | 385
apple | 71 | 2 | 142
tbsp nutritional yeast | 25 | 2 | 50
tbsp vegetarian bullion | 0 | 1.5 | 0
tbsp tamari / braggs liquid aminos | 0 | 2 | 0
tbsp cornstarch | 30 | 1/3 | 10
clove garlic | 4 | 4 | 16
Total |  | 8 | 177

This recipe is cheap, healthy, and most importantly, delicious. It has very few calories (a mere 177 calories... that's nothing!) but tastes pretty amazing. I usually start some rice in the rice cooker before I kick this off… put in two cups and that's a mere 120 calories on top of this. Only 297 calories! Despite that, it's quite filling. (Tasty, too!)

The nutritional yeast is optional, but I like it. You can use whatever bullion you like, but I like the Frontier Natural Products beef-ish tasting vegetarian bullion. Alternately, adding brewers yeast and a bit more salt is great.

You also don't have to use the westsoy baked tofu. You could use any other protein here. A lot of other kinds you have to fry up in advance though, and the westsoy stuff is already done and tastes great and I'm lazy. If you don't have tamari or liquid aminos, just up the bullion.

This makes 8 servings! It usually takes me about 50 minutes to make but I'm slow.

Okay, so! Here's my recipe. You're going to need a large pot, a large cutting board, and a large mixing bowl.

- Get out a large cutting board and chop up cabbage. You want it in pieces probably, though if you prefer tiny ribbons that's fine. Set aside in mixing bowl.
- Chop onions and, if you like, a couple cloves of garlic. Chop up the apples into chunks or wedges. Personally I like wedges.
- Take your large pot, add the olive oil (or whatever oil really) and onion (also garlic if using). Saute that for a few minutes, until it starts to brown. Add apple and saute a bit longer, until the apple starts to brown a little.
- Add a cup of water and stir around the ingredients for about two minutes.
- Dump in the cabbage into the pot. It'll seem like a lot and like you'll never be able to stir this thing. (I told you to get a big pot!) Don't worry, it cooks down.
- Add salt and pepper. Add some more water… I think I usually add about 1 more cup at this point. Stir around the cabbage in and out of the water as best you can for a minute or so. Then cover the pot and let it cook down for five minutes.
- While the cabbage is cooking, chop the baked tofu into cubes, or tear it apart with your fingers if you get grossed out by cubes of tofu.
- Return to the pot. The cabbage should be a bit more cooked down now, but not quite there. Add bullion, nutritional yeast, and tamari/liquid aminos. Open the kidney beans and pour the excess liquid right into the pot. Add more salt and pepper if you like. Now stir that stuff. Get that cabbage in and out of the broth!
- At this point you need to let the cabbage cook down. I usually let it cook down a little bit less than half way. Stir it occasionally.
- Stir together the cornstarch in 1/4 cup of water. You're trying to make a small slurry that'll thicken the broth into a kind of gravy.
- Open the pot and pour the cornstarch in and add the tofu. Time to start stirring again. Stir stir stir!
- Give it a few minutes and the sauce should thicken. The cabbage should become tender but not totally mushy. When you hit that point, stop cooking.
- Serve with rice or some kind of grain. I usually put a tablespoon of cheap parmesan cheese on top too, but whatever you like, go for it.

Enjoy!