Moving Meals: The Stuffed Cabbage Bowl

If you follow me on twitter or are friends with me on Facebook, you know I just moved, as evidenced by the endless tweets complaining about packing and lifting boxes up the stairs. Before that happened, I insisted on eating everything left in the fridge, for two reasons: 1) I didn’t want to move a fridge full of food 2) I was poor from all of the moving expenses and couldn’t buy food. Thus, takeout was quickly eliminated, too.

A few days before the move I looked in the fridge and found cabbage. Just cabbage. I don’t even eat cabbage really, but it was leftover from a juice cleanse my roommate and I tried the week before. We’re not talking about that. I was trying to think of what else I eat cabbage in….and I thought about my grandmother’s stuffed cabbage rolls, or galumpkis as we call them. I don’t know how to make them…and I knew I didn’t have the proper ingredients. But could I lazily throw the random ingredients into a bowl? I could. After a few trips to google, the stuffed cabbage bowl was born. This is about as authentic as Mexican from Taco Bell, but you know what? Live outside the box, people. This is genius, and delicious.

Stuffed Cabbage Bowl

A few leaves boiled cabbage, shredded
About 1/4lb ground meat
A few tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 onion
1 clove of garlic
Dash white wine vinegar
1 cup white rice, cooked.

Saute the onion until just soft, adding the garlic right before it’s finished. Add a tablespoon of tomato paste and water, until the sauce becomes thin. Add a dash of the white wine vinegar. Let it simmer over low heat while you finish the rest of the recipe.

In a frying pan, add the ground meat and cook through, seasoning with salt and pepper. When the meat is cooked, assemble the bowl.

I started by layering the rice on the bottom, then adding a few tablespoons of the sauce. Then I layered the cabbage and meat, topping it all off with the sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!