Cabbage. It's what's for dinner.

I love stuffed cabbage. When I say this, my mother usually makes a face, like I just said, "I love horseradish on ice cream". In her defense, she's never had stuffed cabbage (we're Irish/German, and never had much Eastern European food). I first had it made by The Physicist's grandmother at a family gathering. I, too, made a face when The Physicist told me what it was, but was seduced by the smell of saurkraut. (I love saurkraut.) Stuffed cabbage, or "töltött káposzta" in Hungarian, is a meatball of ground meat, onions, and rice, rolled in a boiled cabbage leaf, and stewed in a tomato-saurkraut broth. It's delicious. If you like saurkraut, you'll like this dish. Now, The Physicist's grandmother makes the finest stuffed cabbage I have ever eaten, but this recipe, from The Hungarian Cookbook by Yolanda Nagy Fintor, wasn't too bad. The sauce was a bit spicier (Yolanda adds a tablespoon of paprika), but overall, it was pretty close to Grandma's. This dish concluded Eastern European week. We only made the two meals, because it was a very busy week (I was babysitting 40 hours for a friend, so didn't have my usual free time), but we hope to get the usual three dishes done next week, as we begin our culinary tour of Asia.

Kapusta. To co będzie na obiad.

Tonight was the first night of Eastern European week featuring the foods of countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain (Hungary, Poland, Russia, etc.) Being the resident Hungarian and better pleased with the meal than The Girl, I have been elected to make this evening's post. Yesterday, The Girl made a ton of homemade pierogies (following this guide, by a friend of ours) with an awesome roasted garlic, caramelized onion, cheddar, and dill filling. We heated them up again tonight to go along with haluski and kielbasi. I thought the pierogies were delicious, but The Girl was less than thrilled with her filling. I'm chalking that up to high expectations based on the enormous amount of work that went into rolling the dough out and then filling and sealing each one. The kielbasi was definitely the low point of the meal, but I guess that's what happens sometimes when buying an untried sausage at Whole Foods. The haluski, however, was amazing! Buttery with a subtle cabbage flavor that took me right back to childhood family reunions and church fish fries. Perfect!