Week 6: Problems Solved--Thanks to Patience from our Members

Thank you thank you, gracious members, for allowing us a week to solve our winter storm problems.

When we checked in on things (by things, I mean the building where we store all the winter share produce and do all of the processing work for Wintergreen Foods) last Saturday we found a flooded basement and power outages.

The burst pipe was easy to find. Scott found it right away and redid some of the plumbing so that it will never be an issue again. He rocks. But the electrical issue was harder to track down. It seemed logical that the well pump and sump pump overloaded a breaker, but there were no tripped breakers. Flooded wires would have resulted in a tripped breaker too. It was perplexing.

It took a bit of sleuthing but Scott finally found the problem. The wind took out one of our power lines. It was kind of a duh moment when he figured it out because a downed line is an obvious thing to look for when the power is out, but we just weren't looking for two separate problems.

In the end, it was the best thing that could have happened. The power must have gone out pretty close to the time that the pipe burst, stopping the well pump and limiting the amount of water in the basement. We also got by with reasonably cheap repairs, since the lines are the power company's responsibility.

Thanks again to the members for giving us the time to work all that out. 

Now that you know what we've been up to this week, I'll get on with the share description.

For week 6 members will receive: Carrots, Potatoes, Rutabaga, Cabbage, Dried Onion OR Dried Tomatoes, and a Choice of Squash.

Members have probably become pretty familiar with these items. The winter gets a little routine. Some may be excited to know that we have pretty much gotten through all of the giant cabbage, most of the cabbage we distribute this week will be under 4 lbs. Also, this is the last week for potatoes. 

The squash are going to vary this week. The plan was to give everyone a long pie pumpkin in week six.

They make good pie and good ears.

They grew really well for us, and, once pureed, they bake into fabulous pies. However, they did not keep well for us. This is the first year we've grown them and our storage conditions have been colder than ideal for squash. We will give them another chance in 2015, but this year only about 12 made it into January. So, 12 members will get a long pie pumpkin. The rest of the members will have a choice of some "odds and ends" squash that have kept well for us including some sweet dumplings, hooligans, and delicata.

I know that some of you are getting tired with the delightful winter staple that is cabbage. Have you stuffed any yet? It makes the cabbage much more exciting.

You can make this recipe vegetarian by substituting cooked lentils for the beef. 

Wintergreen Style Stuffed Cabbage

• 1 cup brown rice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon whole cumin
• 1 head cabbage, cored but otherwise whole
• 1/2 tablespoon butter
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 1 ounce dried tomato, broken/chopped into small pieces
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• red pepper flakes to taste
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 16 ounce can crushed tomatoes

Prepare one cup brown rice according to the package instructions. Add the salt and whole cumin at the beginning of the cooking time.

Like this.

Bring a large (large enough to contain your cabbage) pot of well salted water to boil. Once the water is boiling, cook the cabbage head for about 3 minutes, or until the cabbage is slightly tender. Set the cabbage aside to cool.

Heat 1/2 tablespoon butter in a small saute pan. Saute the garlic, onion, dried tomato, cinnamon, and red pepper flakes in the butter until the onion is just beginning to turn translucent.

It will look like this.

When the cabbage is cool, peel about twelve leaves off and remove the thick midribs of each leaf. Chop remaining cabbage and place in into the bottom of a large baking dish with a lid, like a dutch oven or a deep casserole dish.

The inner leaves get tricky, but broken leaves taste just as
good as whole leaves.

Once the rice is cooked and cool enough to touch, combine the still raw ground beef, cooked onion mixture, and cooked rice. Place about a half a cup of the beef and rice mixture into each cabbage leaf.

Then fold the leaf around the filling.

Like this.

The cook books all have fancy methods to use for folding the cabbage leaves around the filling, but I don't think it really matters. It will all cook up just fine.

Place each cabbage roll in the baking dish that already contains chopped cabbage. I ended up with two layers of cabbage rolls over a giant mound of chopped cabbage, but I used one of the mammoth cabbages. Once you have made all the cabbage rolls pour crushed tomatoes over the top of them.

Like this :)

 Bake, covered,  in a 350 degree oven for one hour. I had to bake mine uncovered for the first 15 minutes because the dish was too full for the lid to fit on (the cabbage on the bottom softened after 15 minutes and I could get the lid on).

Even the lumpiest rolls were delicious.