Yoo-hoo! Mrs. Goldberg!

For Chanukah this year I got yet another Jewish cookbook.

I don't know why, but I seem to have a real attachment to these books. I think that I most identify with my religion through cooking. I am not a traditionally observant Jew at all. I don't go to synagogue. I don't observe Shabbat. I don't fast on Yom Kippur.

But when Rosh Hashanah rolls around, I bake challah. When it's Passover, I can lay out a Seder like nobody's business. Come Chanukah time, I make latkes. Good ones. Purim? Hamentaschen.

So maybe the kitchen is my synagogue? I bond with my ancestors there. I have my great-grandmother's rolling pin. I have my grandmother's hand-written recipes. I have my mom's copy of Elegant Essen, a cookbook put together by a local synagogue that she always brought out when company was coming for the holidays.

I also have way too many other Jewish cookery books, including my latest...

If you are under the age of 65, you may not know who Molly Goldberg is. All I knew of her was that she had a television show in the 1950's that my mother had loved. The opening line on each of her shows was "Yoo-hoo! Mrs. Goldberg!"

Oy, is that some big challah!

Actually, before I even knew that she was a celebrity, I thought she was a friend or relative of my grandmother's. In her hand-written recipe collection she had something called Molly Goldberg's Pickled Peppers. I had no clue that she was a groundbreaking icon!

Molly Goldberg's real name was Gertrude Berg.  She was one of the first women to create, write, produce and star in a long-running hit show....The Goldbergs. She won an Emmy and a Tony award. She was a song writer that was recorded by Patsy Cline, and she also had a very famous cookbook!

Amazingly, they are still printing copies of it. It came out in 1955 and was the bible of Ashkenazi Jewish cookery. It has everything from bagels and knishes to brisket and rugelach.

Sticking with my diet, I chose to make Cabbage Soup. Molly had some interesting ideas on how to make this classic....very different from how I've been doing it. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and followed as closely as I could with the exception of rye bread and beef bones. I also subbed a different cut of meat because I wanted to use something leaner and something I cut cut into bite size pieces.

Also, I halved the recipe. Additionally, I had to make a guess with the tomatoes, as I was unsure what the heck a can of #2 1/2 tomatoes would be.

Here's the original recipe, I will note my substitutions:

Cabbage Soup

3 pounds of beef (plate flank, breast flank, or brisket) - I used something called Petite Beef Tender Chuck Filet Steak
Beef Bones (didn't use this)
2 1/2 quarts water
1 can #2 1/2 tomatoes
2 onions, chopped
4 pounds of cabbage, coarsely shredded
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup lemon juice
4 T sugar (I used 1 packet of Truvia)
1/2 pound sauerkraut, drained (optional...but I tried it!)
2 slices rye bread, trimmed (I left these out too)

Combine the beef, beef bones, water, tomatoes and onion in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Skim the top. Cover and cook over medium heat for one hour.  Add the cabbage, salt and pepper. Cook over low heat for one hour. Add the lemon juice, sugar, and sauerkraut. Cook for 15 minutes.

Soak the bread in water for 5 minutes. Drain and add to the soup. Correct seasoning. The soup should have a more sour than sweet taste. Cook for 15 minutes longer or until the meat is tender.

Serve the soup and the meat at the same time. This makes a complete meal in one dish.

While this didn't knock my socks off, I did like the unexpected addition of the sauerkraut. I think I may stick to my basic cabbage soup recipe with the beef broth and add some of Molly's sauerkraut to the mix.

I'll be keeping cookbook #9 of 99 for sure. I mean, I already thought Molly Goldberg was a relative of my grandmother's anyway...I might as well have her stick around!

Gas Be Damned!

Apparently, cabbage is one of the gassiest foods a person can eat.

I can vouch for that.

Despite this fact, it also happens to be very good for you.

One cup of chopped cabbage has just 22 calories, and it's loaded with valuable nutrients. At the top of the list is sulforaphane, a chemical that increases your body's production of enzymes that disarm cell-damaging free radicals and reduce your rise of cancer. In fact, Stanford University scientists determined that sulforaphane boosts your levels of these cancer-fighting enzymes higher than any other plant chemical!

Translation?

It is low-calorie, nutritious, and is the best cancer-fighting vegetable out there.

Also? It makes you fart.

Last year at this time I was obsessed with Cabbage Soup.

I ate it all of the time, and between Thanksgiving and Christmas I ended up losing 11 pounds! Crazy, right?

Well…after too much indulging over the past couple of months I have buckled down and found my old friend cabbage.

I went on Pinterest and looked for some 17 Day Diet compliant cabbage recipes and immediately found one that caught my eye.

Balsamic Roasted Cabbage

Let me tell you…this was SO easy and SO good!

All you need is a head of red cabbage, a red onion, garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar and you're in business. The only change I made to the original recipe on that site was adding a packet of Truvia to it. That was it.

So go make some cabbage. Lose weight. Fight cancer. Fart. Like Auntie Ina says…."How bad can that be?"

I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie

When I taught Elementary School, one of my favorite books to read at Thanksgiving was I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie by Alison Jackson. Obviously it's a take-off on the Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly…but with Thanksgiving foods instead of spiders and cats and horses. My kind of gal.

I hadn't thought about this book in a few years…probably since my own son has gotten too old to read it at the holiday and the kids I work with now are all under the age of three.

Wouldn't you know it? The old bag popped into my head as I was getting ready to return home from a Thanksgiving vacation in Florida. Specifically this page:

In where said "Lady" has eaten so much that she becomes a balloon in the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I was feeling pretty balloon-ish myself.

Maybe it was the Carvel cake before we left for Florida. Or the stuffing and potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner. It could have been the brisket and carnitas tacos at our favorite Mexican place, El Jefe Luchador. Possibly the two different stops at Menchie's Frozen Yogurt where some incredible genius has invented Cinnabon-flavored yogurt and Cream Cheese Frosting as a squirtable topping. Then there was the night I actually drank…a rarity for me. I had a Strawberry-Rhubarb mojito. And I liked it. A few bialys here, some handfuls of Target Monster Trail Mix there. You get the picture.

By the time I was sitting in the airport waiting for my departing plane, I couldn't even squeeze in my usual "flying chocolate" with my requisite People magazine. It wasn't the big photo of Bill Cosby on the cover making me nauseous…it was all of that food I had over the past week. I made it through the flight without the candy…but somehow made room for the free Popcorners that they passed out.

When I got up the next morning I faced the scale and owned that number on it. I had earned it. Now it was time to make it disappear. I was never so excited to have some cottage cheese and fruit in my whole entire life!

Two days later I have rid myself of two of the (cough-cough) pounds I have seemed to find somewhere between Halloween and Thanksgiving-time. I need to get rid of them before the next holiday rolls around. Ugh, I said rolls.

Unfortunately I have picked up the nasty cold that my husband and son both had last week. I managed to find enough energy to make a pot of my favorite Cycle 1 Italian Egg Drop Soup with Chicken Meatballs. I also had some Eggplant Plop in the freezer and that made the transition to home easier for me. Tomorrow I need to make a turkey breast that I have defrosted, and I was thinking of trying out a new recipe for Balsamic Red Cabbage. I will let you know how it goes, and share it with you over the weekend.

Hopefully I will continue to be the Old Lady Who Swallowed a 17 Day Diet Compliant Fat-Free Unflavored Greek Yogurt. There's a story in there somewhere, right?

I Came, I Slaw, I Conquered

Pinterest is a veritable treasure trove of ideas.

Whenever I need to find something to make for dinner, Pinterest has become my go-to for new ideas. I try to dodge the ridiculously delicious looking unhealthy recipes and go for ones that will fit into the 17 Day Diet. Of course there are the few occasions where I will concoct some crazy Rolo S'mores or bake something with lots of butter and sugar, but for the most part I keep it clean.

A friend pinned a salad called Grilled Ginger Sesame Chicken Salad a few days ago. There were quite a few ingredients in it that I had in the house already, including a big head of cabbage that came from the farm share this week. She had texted me that it was a must-make, so that sealed the deal for me.

I decided to just make the salad on it's own to accommodate my non-chicken eating husband. I made the chicken on the side, and then also made some salmon that was flavored with the marinade in the recipe.

First of all…it was ridiculously delicious. I woke up this morning wanting to eat a bowl of it for breakfast.

Secondly…it really doesn't seem like a salad to me. It's more of a slaw. Raw cabbage and shredded carrots = slaw in my book.

It is mostly 17 Day Diet compliant…the small amount of Hoisin shouldn't be too destructive. Try it out, recipe is in the link above. Let me know how you like it!

The Cabbage That Saved Christmas

So the Christmas miracle I had was in the form of cabbage soup.

No, I am not on the cabbage soup diet…I'm having too much success with the 17DD. BUT…I've learned that there is something to be said for cabbage soup.

When I was a kid my mother used to make cabbage soup when it snowed. It was something that I can just picture my ancestors cooking up durning those cold, Russian winters. Total peasant food. I don't remember liking it very much, but I loved to pick out the meat that my mom put into the soup. It was  called flanken…which are short ribs cut across the bone. Delicious. Not an easy find in my area, but places with a larger Jewish population will usually carry it in the grocery store. I suppose you could ask your butcher to cut the short ribs across the bone…but either way it is NOT a healthy option. So, I opted for a leaner cut of stew meat when I decided to make myself a pot of cabbage soup.

I started off with a head of cabbage, a sweet onion, a large can of San Marzano tomato puree, and a package of stew meat. I cut the meat into smaller, bite-size pieces and browned it in a large stockpot with the chopped onion. After it cooked for a bit, I drained off the fat. I shredded the cabbage and dumped it into the pot with the can of tomatoes. I added enough water to cover the cabbage and that was it. Covered it up and walked away. After a couple of hours I added some salt and pepper. In an attempt to replicate the sweet and sour flavor that my mother always achieved with sugar and sour salt, I added a couple of packets of Truvia and some lemon juice. I could not find sour salt in the store around here. Guess it is like the elusive flanken-cut of meat. Only found in certain areas! Who knows?

Was this the best soup ever?

Not even close. But it was decent. It was filling.

It was a miracle!

I would eat some cabbage soup for lunch and then the next day the scale went down. It happened EVERY time I ate the soup. I am sure it was mostly coincidence but there has to be SOMETHING going on. Whatever it is, I'll take it. To be able to drop 11 pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas is no easy feat…but my new best friend cabbage soup was there to help me along!

I can't promise you any miracles, and I can't even promise you a super-delicious bowl of soup…but here is my hodgepodge recipe:

Cabbage Soup

1 head of green cabbage
1 sweet onion
28-32 ounce can tomato puree
2 pounds stew meat cut into bite size pieces, or 2 pounds lean ground beef
water (or  beef broth to add more flavor)
salt and pepper
Truvia
lemon juice
olive oil for sauté


In a large stockpot, heat enough olive oil to sauté the beef and onion. Cook until onions are translucent and beef is browned. Drain off fat and return to pot. Shred head of cabbage and add to pot with the can of tomatoes. Add enough water to cover the cabbage, bring to a boil. Immediately turn to low/simmer and cover. After an hour or more, add seasonings to taste.


So, I won't win any prizes for this recipe..but I feel like I have won the lottery on the scale! Try it out and see if you get similar results!