Back in October, I planted cabbages and leeks, my first real attempt at winter gardening (here).
Five months later, I harvested a basket full of cabbage leaves, and two tiny leeks - the rest of the leeks had disappeared, I'm not sure when and how, while all the cabbages survived the winter, and grew larger and larger leaves but no "head" to speak of. I asked my elderly neighbor about it, and he shook his head and commented: "Ah, this winter! It's been too wet, a real disaster for cabbages."
A disaster indeed for cabbages. Still, the dark green textured leaves looked quite pretty - in an edible sort of way - in my basket. And looking at them, I realized that if I'm a good-enough gardner, I'm also a lucky gardner, and I can't remember ever losing an entire crop to anything - either to bugs, disease or bad weather. And surely, these leaves that took me and my soil six months to grow couldn't just bypass our table altogether end up in the compost!
So, I brought them to the kitchen, picked out the largest leaves, and blanched and rolled them in little packages filled with leftover rice, which I then popped in the oven where I already had a pizza baking. I think they made the cutest (and most delicious) little cabbage rolls.
But my kids devoured the pizza, all the while looking suspiciously at the cabbage leaves. They weren't at all convinced that they looked pretty - in an edible sort of way.
