Gift Cabbage

The 'Cajun country boy trading network' is alive and well in our little town, and one example of the many things going back and forth between between friends and neighbors this winter is cabbage.  Our garden boxes are small, so we do not grow cabbage 'cause it takes a lot of room grow the wonderful stuff.  Not only that, but we have a good friend, primarily, Smokin' Sam, who does have plenty of room to grow a lot of everything, and he does it with a lot of success, and not only that, he's more than willing to share.    For the last couple months we have been getting 1 or 2 heads of cabbage from him.  He and his wife, Louise, have have been getting satsumas or oranges or grapefruit, or pickles or canned figs in return. (The sausage and Andouille Sam blesses us with makes whatever we are cooking, 'sing'.)    I have been patient through this whole process, allowing my salad head wife to slaw to her hearts content.  All winter along the only other thing we did with the cabbage was make a casserole in a black iron pot.  That was cause I was too lazy to make cabbage rolls and just layered the makings in the pot and threw it in the oven.  It was wonderful of course and appeased me for a while but when our neighbor dropped off what may be the last 2 cabbage heads of the season off I put my foot down and insisted we smother them.  Now do not misunderstand me I love slaw and Peggy is a wiz at it.  She makes several wonderful varieties, as any one who knows us will avow.   The Cajun country boy in me just likes them cooked down so far ya can barely tell they usta be cabbage.  When the neighbor dropped these off:

I just hadda drag out the black iron pot and go to wacking them up.  With a couple yellow onions and some left over chicken from the other night that I had lightly sauteed in the pot with 3 slices of bacon I began putting in wacked up cabbage.

Well it wasn't long before the pot was full and I still had almost 1 whole one left to add.

Not a problem, just put the lid on and come back in a few minutes.

Fill it up again and repeat.

One more time and its all in the pot.

after letting it cook down stirring occasionally I adjusted the seasoning with our home made Cajun spice.

Yes, this is the same pot that I filled 3 times and No I aint took none out......yet.

I actually like it cooked down even more till it is a darker nuttier brown color but to be honest this took a while and I got hungry.  We had it over rice and like usual I got busy eating and forgot to take a plated picture.  We had it over rice with a salad on the side and it was wonderful.  Sadly we are out now and for the first time in months bought a head of cabbage.  Now that I have had my fix Peggy got our the food processor and shredded some of it with carrots and made a slaw that was delicious but I sure enjoyed smothering a pot 3 times full, down to half full of Cajun style comfort food.

Peggy asked that I refer yall to this story she wrote way back some years ago here on ourblog about 'smothering' things. (for some reason it will only search with Google to find it)

 

http://cappyandpegody.blogspot.com/2005/09/smothered-squirrelsi-can-just-see-it.html

It's hard to  believe we been at it this long, blogging that is.  I been smothering things all my life.