Cabbage Salad, and an Announcement

More than a month ago now, I was sitting at home alone on a Friday night, writing up a post for you all about cabbage salad. In what might be called “the calm before the storm,” I wrote peacefully about my commute, and cabbage, and how my love of food began. (I still want to tell you about these things. Except maybe not about my commute. When I type out “tell you about my commute,” it seems on par with writing to tell you that it’s raining outside, or that I have shoes on my feet. But, I digress, and) five (?!) weeks later, as you may have noticed, no posts about thinly sliced vegetables have emerged, and the reason looks something like this:

It’s shiny. It’s gorgeous. It’s shiny.

And it has brought on a peculiar type of writers block. I’ve been sitting on this post for a month now, writing and re-writing, and re-writing yet again. Getting engaged is a Really Big Deal, and my words should match (right? right). How can you write about a giant life change like this and not craft the kind of sentences that make angels sing and bring readers to tears with the hugeness of it all?

Well, uh, pretty easily, apparently. There are many things my brain can do right now, including but not limited to: statistics homework, comprehensive wedding blog perusal, wedding venue selection, wedding date selection, and complete and utter Pinterest obsession, but the pretty words, they are not coming.

After a lot of thought, tons of agonizing, and countless re-writes, I’ve realized, it’s ok. It can be simple. I’m getting married to the love of my life. It’s thrilling, and it’s also mundane. We’re engaged, but we still need to pay the rent, wake up to our alarms in the morning, cook dinner. That’s actually the thing that’s most incredible in all of this. We’ll be paying rent and waking up and cooking dinner, together. The wedding will be lovely, and simple dinners will be too.

So I have a simple dinner for you. Let’s celebrate the grandness and the day-to-day, with some cabbage salad.

 

It's shiny and ring-shaped, too!

 

Red Cabbage Salad with Lemon and Black Pepper
Serves 6 as a side (or, um, 2 if you’re eating it straight from the bowl as a meal).

This recipe comes from Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life. It’s simple and comes together fairly quickly, but is filling enough that I’ll often eat just a big bowl of it for lunch or dinner. (You might want to pair it with a quesadilla or perhaps a sausage if the idea of eating a pound of cabbage in one sitting isn’t your thing.) She notes that you want a sharp knife in order to slice the cabbage very thin, and I wholeheartedly second that. Finally, I, being the garlic fanatic I am, didn’t find the flavors quite pronounced enough, and doubled the vinaigrette. You might want to start with half my amount, and add to taste.

1.5 pounds cabbage (a smallish head)
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons lemon juice
1 large clove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
freshly ground black pepper

– Remove damaged or bruised leaves from outside of cabbage. Cut cabbage into quarters, remove the core, and with a very sharp knife, slice cabbage as thinly as possible.
– In a bowl, whisk together until well-combined: olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and salt.
– In a large bowl, toss together the cabbage with the parmesan, black pepper, and a couple of tablespoons of the dressing. Taste, and add more dressing and pepper as needed.

 

 

 

Seeing as it’s simple, inexpensive, and delicious, I’m adding this to Frugal Food Fridays, hosted this month by Tales of Pigling Bland.