This week, through the lens of cabbage

Monday 

I forgot to wear a hat walking today. Ice pellets shot at my forehead as if I were an X-wing charging through hyperspace. When I get home I hang my wet coat over the radiator and make another cup of coffee. It never tastes as good as the first one, the one I sip in the quiet of the kitchen when the house is still. But I like knowing it’s there for me. I wipe up the coffee grounds that always spill around the coffee maker, then I turn the oven on and begin slicing red cabbage. I will layer the cabbage with sliced apples, onions and spices and leave them to roast in the oven for the rest of the morning. It seems like the right thing to do. 

I’ve been making this Delia Smith recipe from her Vegetarian Collection¹ for a long time now. Delia ends the recipe with, “Red Cabbage, once cooked, will keep warm without coming to any harm, and it will also re-heat very successfully. And yes, it does freeze so well so, all in all, it’s a real winner of a recipe.” I agree. There are bits of red cabbage permanently adhered to the pages of my cookbook, probably leftover from a cold morning last November.

That night I reheated the cabbage, now wilted down into a soft pile of deliciousness, and we ate it with mashed potatoes and roasted sausages. I put a dab of mustard on the side of my plate to sweep the sausage through on the way to the cabbage.

Tuesday 

I broke a glass this morning. The sun was barely up and I was still in my early morning uniform: a white terry housecoat tied tightly at the waist. I am my sister Jessie in child form. Every day after school she would put her housecoat over her clothes and tie the belt tightly at the waist. She was comfortable, pulled together, but under it all, she was ready for anything. I was also ready for anything, I thought, as I reached for the Duralex glass I had left on the counter the night before. But as I picked it up it slipped from my hand and hit the counter with a full-bodied smash. Duralex has been ‘shatter proof’ since its beginnings in 1939, but nonetheless, uniform chunks of glass scattered across the counter and onto the floor. It was a diamond explosion, a quick hail storm, glistening in the soft grey morning light. I crunched across the floor in my slippers, took a cold coffee mug from the cupboard, ran the tap until it was hot, filled my mug and left it to preheat. Then I took out the broom and started sweeping. 

By now the writer Roxanne Gay is in my ears, talking to Glennon, Abby and Amanda about her growing disdain for social media. She doesn’t like being accountable to everyone for everything she writes anymore. People are mean, she says. It’s getting toxic. I think she should shift her conversations toward food. I know Roxanne Gay loves to cook. I’ve watched her on the New York Times website making tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. “Use whatever the hell you want,” she says, deadpan, while grating cheese onto a slice of bread. I like her. 

I tip the dustpan into a cardboard box, crashing the chunks of glass together with another wooshing smash.

Later that day I made a grilled cheese sandwich. I sliced sourdough, aged cheddar and the last russet apple. I didn’t think there would be any leftover cabbage after my seventeen year-old told me he’d enjoyed a plate of it with fried eggs and bacon that morning, but he left me just enough. I layered it between the apple and aged cheddar (use whatever the hell you want), buttered the bread then grilled the sandwich in my secondhand George Foreman grill. It was tang and crunch and warmth and buttery grilled bread, all in one bite. 

Wednesday

Dottie the yellow lab pulled the fabric dripping from the bottom of the old blue settee. It was calling to her, a cambric siren, like a piece of toilet paper hanging from the roll. Pull me, it said. I will come with you. How fun. 

The settee belonged to the previous owner of our house. She was downsizing and offered to sell it to us but we were stretched already, so she sold it to an auctioneer. I didn’t know I’d want that sweet blue settee. I didn’t know that the blue settee didn’t want to leave. Our Scandi-IKEA furniture looked so out of place in this old Victorian home. So we went to the auction and bought the settee back, drooping under fabrics and all.  

The settee is upholstered in blue velvet, the colour of red cabbage when its cooking environment shifts from acid to alkaline. This is why apples are in Delia’s recipe. They’re acidic, as is the splash of vinegar she calls for. Fruit in savoury recipes isn’t always a hit around here, but I left those apples in anyway. I’m glad I did. Otherwise, we could have ended up with braised cabbage the colour of a torn blue settee. 

Thursday

I sat down and drew the last of the raw cabbage. I was making a quick version of the braised dish where you toss all the ingredients together in a pan and sauté it until the cabbage has wilted, about twenty minutes. But instead of getting on with the cooking, I pulled out my watercolour set, found a black pen, and started to play. Capturing those twisting ribbons rimmed in white isn’t easy. So I just squiggled away, using all the tones - raw, acidic and alkaline- then let the paper dry and put the pan back on the stove.

1. I found the recipe for Delia’s braised cabbage with apples on here site, over here.