CABBAGE SOUP and THOUGHTS ON COOKING

Do you enjoy cooking?

I can't say that I do.
Seriously, I don't.
It's something I've got to do, 
but "enjoy" isn't the word I'd pick out of a verb garden.
"Tolerate" might be more apropos.
 

Now, baking, ah, that's another story, entirely.

I just LOVE to bake, and would do it more often,

were it not for the flab-bage 
that results from eating all of those baked goodies. 

When I was trying to explain my feelings about cooking 
to a friend recently,

I told her that I don't enjoy cooking, 

mostly because it takes me away from other things I prefer to do.

Those of you who have been following me for awhile
 know that I often say,
I'd Rather Do Anything But Cook.
It's even a category on my sidebar.

But, the reality is that I do have to put food on the table for my family,

and I prefer not to serve too many prefab-baged foods,

so I do spend a fair amount of time cooking. 

Whatever I do make is always quick and easy,

and, in pretty much every recipe I have shared with you,

I've noted that simplicity is a key ingredient.

As I was gab-baging with my friend,

it occurred to me that there is one food type that I really do enjoy making,

and that is soup.

Thinking about the reason,

it is really quite simple - -

all of the ingredients get dumped into a pot,

and I can forget about it until it's done.

If a watched pot doesn't boil, 
that's a good excuse for me to go and do something else.

Plus, it is really, really, REALLY hard to ruin soup.

Even for me. 

In my opinion, there's nothing better on a cold, drab-bage day

than a bowl of homemade soup. 

It's so satisfying, and just warms my innards.

 Most recipes make a ton of soup,

which means we can either eat soup for days on end,

or freeze a batch for a rainy one.  

 Years ago, my friend gave me this recipe for Cabbage Soup.

She got it from a friend, so I don't know the origin of the recipe.

In her sticky note, she said she usually adds 
more than the 1/3 cup of rice the recipe calls for. 

The first time I made it, 1/3 cup looked like too little in a gigantic stock pot,

so I added a full cup. 

Let's just say there was so much, 
I thought it was going to overflow the pot, 
and fill the kitchen knee-deep with rice.

So, I'd say, depending on how hearty you want this soup to be,

add between 1/3 and 2/3 cup of uncooked rice.

Unless, of course, you have a fondness for trudging 
through cooked rice in hip boots. 

The addition of ground turkey and rice make this a filling,
and satisfying meal. 

Like many other soups, it will thicken once it sits in the fridge.

It can be thinned out with a little water, if you like. 

Don't let the long list of ingredients put you off........

almost half of them are spices. 
Focus instead on the blissfully short "Method" part of the recipe.
That's my kind of cooking 😉. 

Now that I've blab-baged on and on,

I hope you'll give this delicious cabbage soup a try.

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