How Green Was My Cabbage

I just couldn't resist taking this photo of stuffed cabbage before it went into the oven. Look at all those shades of green! It seemed a shame to have to cook such loveliness, but then, even artists need to eat.

The recipe, by the way, is from the Joy of Cooking, which is still my favorite all-around cookbook, after using it to learn how to cook "normal" food almost 25 years ago when I had a summer job as a private cook on Martha's Vineyard. Prior to that summer, my only cooking experience had been in the realm of macrobiotics, which didn't really translate to the WASP-y diet of my employers. Thanks to the Joy of Cooking, I was saved from the embaressment of having to ask what a "canape" is, or how to make such WASP mainstays as chicken divan and leg of lamb with mint jelly. Fortunately for me (and my best friend/coworker), our employers were quite old and didn't have much of an appetite, leaving us with heaps of leftovers every night, which I remember shoveling down greedily at the kitchen counter -- TABs and cigarettes in hand -- while getting up our courage to go out to the local bars and dance to reggae until the wee hours of the morning with totally inappropriate members of the opposite sex.

Yep, those were the days all right!