Ramblings

I was watching an Italian cooking show the other night at a friend’s house, and I’m not exactly sure what the chef was making because I wasn’t really paying attention, but it was basically just a huge pan of boiled cabbage.

I begrudgingly ate cabbage practically every day for over a year when I was traveling and very rarely enjoyed it. For some reason it seems to be the vegetable of choice for most of Europe and Asia. I think it’s also the main reason I was so bloated and gassy the entire time I was abroad, which definitely made the whole trip less fun at times, not just for myself, but especially for other people on crowded buses and trains.

When I was traveling through Romania, I stopped for a bite to eat at a restaurant which only had menus in Romanian, but the waiter was nice and took the initiative to read and translate the menu for me.

“This first salad has red cabbage, white cabbage, and blue cabbage. The second salad has red cabbage, white cabbage, blue cabbage, and boiled cabbage. The third salad has red cabbage, white cabbage, blue cabbage, and a special type of Romanian cabbage. I don’t think there is an a English translation for this Romanian cabbage, but it is an especially good type of cabbage.” It wasn’t exactly the most exciting thing I’d had read to me. About a quarter of the way through his reading of the menu, where every dish had at least two types of cabbage, I asked him to stop and just bring me whatever his favorite meal was at this restaurant, which turned out to be an entire rotisserie chicken stuffed with apples served on a bed of what I assume was Romanian cabbage. There was also a side salad of red and white cabbage. Except for the cabbage, which I ate because I was so hungry and people on the crowded bus later that day probably regretted, it was a pretty good meal.

On a more personal and relevant note, Christmas, and desperate husband season, is now over and the soundtrack at the store has been changed. No more Dean Martin singing popular holiday songs. It’s now mostly John Mayer who I have to put up with.

Ugh…cabbage…5,890 out of 100,000.