16 oz prepared red cabbage with apple bits

Mix everything except the cabbage and paprika in a bowl. Knead until every item is distributed evenly. Place cabbage on bottom of baking dish. Sprinkle paprika. Spread meat mixture on top of cabbage. Cover and cook in oven for one our at 350 degrees. Forty minutes in, feel free to drain. With ten minutes left, cover with sauce.

Sauce for meatloaf

• 4 tablespoons minced onion
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 4T of brown sugar,
• 4T vinegar,
• 2T Worchestershire Sauce
• 1 teaspoon basil leaves

Simmer everything in a small sauce pan and stir constantly. Serve with meatloaf.

• 1 small onion, minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 dried chipotle pepper, chopped
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 6 oz can tomato paste
• 1 12 oz can cola
• 1/2 c vinegar, white or apple cider
• 1 squirt yellow mustard
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• salt and black pepper to taste
• hot sauce to taste
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1 tsp liquid smoke (optional)

Over a medium heat, sautee onion, garlic, and pepper in olive oil in a medium saucepan until onion is soft and translucent. Add tomato paste and sautee 2-3 minutes, mixing with vegetables. Add all but the  last 3 ingredients and stir to mix. Reduce heat to low and simmer 1 hour, stirring periodically. It should thicken quite a bit.

Add lemon juice and hot sauce to taste. Add liquid smoke, if desired.

The mixture will be chunky. If you want a smoother sauce whir in a food processor for a few seconds until smooth.

Start with cooking your rice because it can cook while we prep everything else. Once your rice is boiling, turn the heat down and simmer on a low heat for about thirty minutes.

While the rice is cooking slice one large zucchini into cubes about one-quarter-inch small. Pre-heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet. Once the oil is hot, insert your ground hamburger and attack it with your spatula while salting and peppering until you have small chunks of slightly browned hamburger. Before the ground beef is completely cooked, dollop your stone ground mustard into the pan and give it a good stir.

Next, toss in all that zucchini we diced earlier. We won’t be draining the ground beef fat because we want to fry the zucchini and the rice in the juices. Splash some Worcestershire into the skillet and give your food a couple of good tosses. Don’t be afraid to dash in a bit more salt and pepper.

By this point your rice should be almost fully cooked. The technique I use is to pour rice into a small pot and then cover it with double the amount of water and then simmer it on the oven, covered, until all the water boils away. Just before the rice gets fluffy and when there is just a bit of water left is when I insert my ingredients for flavoring the rice. This time we are putting curry into the rice.

After approximately five minutes from the last step, dump all the rice into your skillet and keep the heat on high. Just five more minutes of cooking and stirring and just a pinch more salt and we will be done. In the last minute of cooking I sprinkled in some orange zest and mixed it into our dinner.

I think I changed point of view throughout the last few paragraphs from first person to second person and then back to first person again but I’m too lazy to go back and re-write it so don’t let it confuse you too much.

One rule that I follow is to always cook an extra portion in case an unexpected guest arrives. I live by this rule. I wouldn’t suggest it to those who don’t know how to eat leftovers, however.

First I started preheating the oven while I wrapped a couple potatoes in some aluminum foil. Then I liberally salted and peppered the meat. I want the meat to sit in its own juices for a moment. A couple cap-fulls of vermouth and a splash of worcestershire probably won’t hurt the flavor.

After throwing the tubers into the oven, I tabbed about two almost three tablespoons of butter into my frying pan. I do not fear fats and oils. You should not either. The idea was to sear the steak and bring the internal temperature up to par as quickly as possible. From prior experiences we had learned that the quality of this steak was quite atrocious. I was hoping that cooking it in this manner would help to avoid the nasty chewy low quality beef flavor that we experienced from previous adventures with this meat.

I left the steak on each side long enough to create a deep brown color. Because the smoking point of the butter wasn’t as high as I needed, I didn’t quite get the color I was looking for. The ideal color would have been the brown you get just before it starts to caramelize on the outside.

After getting some color on both sides I started preparation of the onion. I only had half of a red onion left. About medium sized. This was all I really needed so that worked out fine.

The plan now was to allow that internal temperature to stabilize so I needed a few more minutes with the stove but I didn’t want all the heat going directly into the outside layer of meat. I dumped the onions into the pan and I love the sound that a pan makes when you throw in something fresh. It is one of my most favorite things to hear.

I love the bitter taste of onions so I did not want them cooking too long. Just long enough to soften them a little. So while those were cooking I spread, liberally, some stone ground mustard onto each side of the steaks and cooked both sides for another minute give or take. The smells coming out of my kitchen at this point were making me salivate.

This is where I turned off both the oven and the stove so as to allow the potatoes to cool off and let the frying pan cool a bit before taking the food out. I have this thing with leaving empty hot dishes on my stove. They need to cool off before I make them empty.

The potatoes received just a little bit of salt, butter, pepper, and a topping of ranch chip dip. I don’t know if it is really ranch or not, it is pink, but it came from my fridge and the container says ranch so I assume it is. It almost tastes southwest.

Anyway, I pigged out and ate a steak and a potato and then another half of the steak before I was engorged. Now I am sitting here staring at and smelling my food wishing that I could eat the rest. I really need to learn how to cook single servings.