Book Love!

Alright, so you know that moment when you got home late and dinner is behind schedule so you prep your broccoli for steaming and put it in a pan with a lid on it and think, "I'll remember to put water in that!" ? That moment? Yeah.
I had that moment tonight.
One scorched pan later, I was out a vegetable for dinner.
Determined to serve *something* green, I opened the vegetable drawer in the fridge. There was a cabbage. And I'm all like, "A cabbage? I don't know what to do with a cabbage... How did that even get there?" (I do actually know how it got there, but I forgot to use it the way I had planned to.) I panicked. Then I remembered that I had checked out this book from the library that seemed like it might be helpful. And ladies, it was amazing. Let me introduce you to "The Flavor Bible" by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg.

It's laid out sort of like a giant index. Under each entry there's a nifty list with information you ought to know like Season (fall and winter for cabbage, in case you were wondering), Function, and Techniques. Then there's a spectacular list of other ingredients and flavors that pair well with it, some in varying boldness/capitals indicating the better or more popular choices. For example, under "Cabbage" they have:
apples and apple cider
BACON
bay leaf
beef
bell peppers, red
etc. etc.
The list is much too long to type up in its entirety, they have 76 items all lined up for the choosing. I ended up sauteing thinly sliced cabbage in a healthy spoonful of coconut oil, crushed in a clove of garlic, added a splash or two of apple cider vinegar, and just a bit of chicken stock to help deal with the acidity of the vinegar. (All of those flavors are in that extraordinary list by the way.) It was so tasty! And I felt so cool! I cooked cabbage, in an entirely new-to-me way without using a "recipe" at all. I've already added this book to my to-own list.

Happy Dinner-Rescuing, Y'all!
~Noble