Oh yeah...

cooked cabbage last night to go with baked pork chops and sliced tomatoes (natch). It is so easy and inexpensive and good.

Choose a medium to large firm head of cabbage...it should be heavy for its size. Remove the first few outer leaves and rinse off. You can core it if you want, but I leave mine in tact because the remainder of othe head will stay fresher in the fridge. That will be cole slaw some night soon.

This is about half a head, cut in large chunks.

Place in a large sauce pan and season with about 2 spoons of sugar, crushed red pepper, a little bacon grease and enough water to come up about a fourth of the way from the bottom. This is one of those "as you like" dishes...we like enough sugar to smell sweet and enough crushed pepper to make you sniffle. The bacon grease I keep in the freezer and just chunk off about a teaspoon to give the cabbage a little bacon flavor.

Cover the pan and cook over medium heat until it's done, again as you like it. I cook mine until it's just tender and still has a little green color. You can cook it to crisp tender or gray...what it's called when it is nearly translucent and almost mushy. Grayed cabbage is good with hot cornbread...pour the cabbage and some of the liquid over the bread.

This is when ours was done. As you can see, it loses a good bit of volume so you need to fill your pan full. If you over fill the pan, just sit the lid on top and as it cooks the lid will shut. It only takes about 20 minutes or so, depending on how done you want it to be.

This was about $.75 worth of cabbage, the pork chops were less than $4.00, and we have leftovers for lunch.

Yum!

We had a good dinner last night...baked pork chops, home fries and cooked cabbage. If you haven't tried the cabbage, it's really easy and tasty...plus CHEAP.

Cut a medium sized head of cabbage into large chunks, place in a sauce pan, sprinkle with sugar, crushed red pepper, dot with bacon drippings (or add a chunk of ham) and add enough water to cover about an inch on the bottom. Cover and cook until it's tender or crisp-tender, however you prefer. It should have enough sugar to smell sweet and enough crushed red pepper for a little burn. It is really good with a baked sweet potato, but Hubby wanted home fries. Home fries it was.

We found two more tomatoes yesterday and we've got some strawberries turning. The garden is looking good, and (knock on wood) the heavy rains have not seemed to hurt it. Hopefully we'll have some sunshine today.

The squash is coming right along too. This zucchini is a hybrid, it is mottled green instead of solid and it has a very mild flavor. I like to pick it when it's on the small side, slice it and saute in a little olive oil. It's good on the grill, too.

Have a wonderful day!

Spring has Sprung

Our first day of spring hit with a huge snowstorm...two days of it. Fortunately the ground had warmed some and the snow turned to rain, so nothing stuck. Doesn't my garden look nice?

Desperate times call for desperate measures so all my good intentions about supper went out the door. That first day of snow called for chili dogs made with leftovers from the batch Randy made. The cost was chili ($.0, it was already figured from a previous meal), 4 hot dogs ($.49), slaw ($.35), buns and chips ($.75) for a total of $1.59. Not bad!