Magic Cabbages Live and Grow

Tonight we had Cabbage soup, with beef gravy?

I'm not sure how else to describe this meal and there are no pics, mostly because I forgot the camera on the desk before we ate it. There are however plenty of left overs and so I shall take a pic of it later, when it's not in large plastic containers.

I think this meal proves that I have the strangest group of people eating in one house ever.

I started with a rather large head of cabbage, DH grew up eating boiled cabbage sometimes at his grandma's house (I think) it's usually done with some sort of pork product in it, but as I've mentioned odd Southern pork products are hard to come by here in Okinawa Japan. Chop up the cabbage and add it to a LARGE pot. Then thinly slice about 6 short carrots and add them to the pot, and a gallon of water, and 3 packets of Ham flavor by Goya. Let it boil till Cabbage and carrots are tender (cabbage more so than carrots). Scrub 4 potatoes and then chop and cook in the microwave (much like you were going to make mashed potatoes) when fork tender, drain and add to pot. Check for Salt and add a heafty amount of freshly ground black pepper.

Dice and trim a 2.75 lb Chuck Beef Roast into (kid) bite size pieces, season with about 2 Tbs Mc Cormick Gourmet Burger seasoning mix and Garlic, small dice one half a small onion. Brown in a large cast iron skillet with a coating of olive oil. De-glaze the pan with water and then make a corn starch slurry to thicken, bring to a boil. Check for Salt.

We ate ours with the meat gravy over the soup, but you could drain the cabbage, carrot, potato meadly and then put the meat gravy over, or put the meat on the side or serve the 2 dishes separately all together. The kids are pretty big fans of soup, and will slurp even cabbage broth. The baby thought the carrot discs were fun to scoot around her tray and bite into. I'm not sure how DH will feel about the combo but luckily he eats his meals the day after and at work!

With DH"S work schedule this week I only had time to get half the grocery shopping done today, so I"ll have to go back tomorrow and finish up. At least I don't have to go down half the aisle's tomorrow, but I still have to go :( if there were only a person I could train to do this one task for me. It's not the act of getting the food itself that bothers me, it's the supermarketness of it. Why are there no longer butchers, and bakers, and so forth? I'd MUCH prefer that, even if it took me longer, at least I'd feel less like cattle being herded through a maze. And I'd know the people from whom I'm purchasing such things from, and I'd be able to make better choices, and judgments about the food I'm bringing home instead of basing my decisions on my pocketboook alone. I think the real solution is for when I grow up to have enough land to grow some of my own produce and raise my own cow?