Doll Babies (R)

Gainesville

Short one. I let it get late again. Mea culpa.

Work started with a soul-draining meeting, then continued with my being pelted mercilessly by a non-stop barrage of trouble tickets that were all over the map. This did have the small upside of making me realize how many things I do that only I know how to do-- and the much bigger downside of making me realize that I need to figure out how to document all this to train the various people who will inherit said things. I know they plan to turn my position into something else and divide up my current job functions, as well they should. It hasn't made any sense as a single position description for a long time.

Bill's cold is worse again. I wish he'd stay home a day or two, but he figures he had his ONE day off with this thing (now in its third week) and that's plenty. I scrapped the planned Athenian Chicken thing I was planning and pulled out the batch of ham bean soup (still with the Christmas ham bone in it) from the freezer and we had that with a spinach egg salad. The weather has turned cold again, so I was up for some comfort food as well.

Let the record show that I spent 1.5 hours on the project today, coding a Smilin' Jack strip. Very difficult, which of course makes for good examples of what XML can and can't do.

I do apologize, Mom, for not getting your icon on the server today. I just plain forgot. I felt so bad about it that I spent too much time tonight trying to remember how to post stuff to my atlantic.net website (without success, alas). Will try to get to it tomorrow for sure.

And tomorrow for the Diry too. Yes, I too was fascinated by the 8th grader into her dolls. No, it wasn't Betsy Wetsy -- the Toni dolls were 1949, so we were well beyond that. "Blessed Event" was probably the ugliest doll ever created-- it actually looked like a REAL newborn, hardly even cleaned up. I think (I hope!) I thought better of it when the time came.

But dear Toni-- she was a sweetheart, and that perm kit she came with! As the website where I found the image pointed out, the permanent stuff was just sugar water, and when it ran out, the instructions told the real grown-up mom she could just make some more. If Toni were released today in this greed-and-grab culture, you'd have to BUY more perm solution when you ran out!

Meanwhile, Marty asked for "Unstuffed Cabbage," and here it is. It's from my favorite low carb cookbook, for reasons that are obvious from its title: 15 minutes! The friendly wordiness is all the author's, not mine. This isn't a very elegant recipe, to be sure, but it tastes great and is very easy, despite its verbal length. I'll bet it would work with tofu crumbles too, for our resident vegetarian.

Unstuffed Cabbage

Stuffed cabbage is a perennial favorite, but there's no way to stuff all those leaves and get 'em cooked in 15 minutes! Here's a recipe that gives you all the flavor of stuffed cabbage at breakneck speed. Do use very lean ground beef for this recipe-- it saves you the time needed to drain off the grease.

1-1/2 pounds ground round or other very lean ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 head cabbage coarsely chopped [I use bagged pre-chopped stuff]
8-ounce can tomato sauce
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt

Start the ground beef cooking in a heavy skillet over high heat; spread it out to cover the bottom of the pan so it cooks quicker.

While the ground beef is browning, chop the onion and crush the garlic. Plunk them in the pan with the ground beef, and stir it up, using a spatula to turn it over and break it up so that it cooks evenly. Cover the pan and let it continue cooking.

Meanwhile, chop he cabbage coarsely [if not using bagged] Stir this into the beef mixture a bit at a time-- it will come close to overwhelming your skillet, unless yours is bigger than mine. Again, take care to turn everything over to keep it cooking evenly. Re-cover the pan.

Continue to stir the meat mixture to keep it cooking evenly, covering in between stirrings. When the cabbage is starting to wilt, stir in the tomato sauce, lemon juice, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt. Re-cover, let the whole thing simmer for 5 minutes, then server.

Yield: 5 servings, each with 7 grams of carbohydrates and 2 grams of fiber, for a total of 5 grams of usable carbs and 25 grams of protein.

from Dana Carpenter, 15-Minute Low-Carb Recipes