Storm and Stuffed Cabbage
16 December 2024 | St. Marys, GA
Cap'n Chef Andy | Fall Weather Pattern

Not my clowns, not my circus. That is an amusing phrase, especially now. RFK jr in charge of health. The clowns come in, send in the clowns. It seems to be a recurring theme. If you put clowns in charge of government agencies, then you can take them down. I rant, but government is not a single edged sword, what comes around, goes around.
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For someone like me, a sort of intellectual, the Nazi experience in Germany is something to never forget. I recommend reading Evans' third reich trilogy. I reread it.
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If you are an intellectual like me you have to have a way out, like a Switzerland, or Hawaii, or maybe just an old ocean boat. The ultimate escape vehicle. While you are leaving, the hoards escaping where you are going are coming here.
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I made the borscht using kielbasa, etc, and we had dinner at Notter's Pond, a public pond sort of thing. There is a metal table and chair trio where we supped our soup. The birds are mainly Canadian geese and some local ducks. The park closes at sunset and we only had an hour or so to eat our soup and get out.
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Bleu, the black american cocker, decided to jump in the lake, into the foul algae, then come out and roll in the dirt and mud. Eloisa was ready to loose it, she had kept him clean all day. She says he is like a little 2 year old kid. He does things sometimes that reinforces that notion. She took him behind a restaurant where they had a water hose and she hosed him down, then asked me what I wanted to do.
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We went to the Southern River Walk restaurant again. It is a pleasant place with good food and mostly endearing wait staff. We had wine and played a word game on my phone. There was a trivia game going on in the restaurant and they wanted us to play, they needed another team. You're already playing a game, they said, but we had wine, cheesecake with chocolate syrup, and an out of town couple sat with us and played with Bleu.
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Eloisa liked the borscht and wanted to know how to make it. Too many ingredients for her to contemplate. I texted her the link to Martha Stewart's borscht cooking on YouTube. Martha was cooking with her mother, Big Martha, who is of course a little old lady.
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This borscht that I made was concocted on the fly in Kaimu's galley. I had a big stock pot and cut up kielbasa, onions, potatoes, mushrooms, and some carrots. I added 3 cups of water and started the soup boiling. I reserved 3 cans of beets and a can of diced tomatoes. I put in a tablespoon of dried dill and a teaspoon of garlic salt. This cooked for about a half hour on simmer to make sure the potatoes were overdone, then I whisked it. The potatoes fall apart and thicken the soup. In went the beets and the red beet juice and the diced tomatoes. The sour cream went in after the soup came off the flame. Blend it, try some of it.
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I think the soup is better with beef like chuck roast than with the kielbasa. It's good, but the beef really makes it. I'm not going to make it for a while, but when I do it next time will be with beef, probably.
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I call it a one pot wonder. I didn't try to make a roux separately, or cook things separately, just put it all in one pot and cook it up. A roux would thicken it and that would be an improvement. I've made it that way before. Maybe next time.
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We went to North Beach Park in Fernandina the day after Eloisa's birthday. It was a bit chilly but almost no wind. The butane cooker was used to heat up about a quart of the borscht and then later to grill a couple of naan cheese and tomato sandwiches. We had a box of Black Box pinot noir. It was a pleasant afternoon sitting at a picnic table in a gazebo, part of the boardwalk that goes from the park to the beach. We met a lot of people who were going for a walk on the beach.
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I changed the oil in the Honda CRV when I found out that Cornelia Marie had last changed the oil using regular oil, not the recommended synthetic. I found new aches and pains after crawling under the car and wrenching the filter and oil pan bung.
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I wanted to make stuffed cabbage and went to the store for cabbage, etc. The recipe from Martha Stewart is actually from her mother's grandmother. The mirepoix they used was celery, green sweet pepper, onion, and some garlic. No carrot. I could not get meatloaf meat mix and ended up with ordinary ground beef.
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It was windy and I decided to all the cooking in Kaimu's galley. We had originally planned to cook out at Notter's pond or Crooked River State Park. It would be like a stuffed cabbage picnic. Instead I cooked in the galley.
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The first thing was to get a big pot of water boiling to steam off the cabbage leaves. When they come off I don't trim the center spine of the leaf, I do cut the biggest butt piece of the leaf off. I pile the leaves and keep cooking the cabbage. The more you cook it the easier it is to make the cabbage rolls out of it. I had a large skillet that was intended for the cabbage rolls, but it was too small and I needed to use a stock pot. I had the large skillet like a prep bowl with the ground beef, then diced veggies, some spicing was added, ground pepper, 2 tablespoons of dried parsley, about 1 ½ tsp of garlic salt. The stock pot was layered on the bottom with the small leftover cabbage parts. Then the leaves were rolled up with the mixture and placed in the pot. The pot went on the stove with a 64 oz. jar of V-8 juice poured over the cabbage rolls. This was my new idea. Tomato sauce or tomato vegetable soup are a good way to sauce these cabbage rolls, but V-8 juice has a lot of flavor and I thought I would try it this time.
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Bring it to a boil, then turn it down to simmer for a couple hours. I took a shower. Eloisa was down at Amelia Island and needed some logistic help to coordinate our stuffed cabbage picnic.
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We ended up at Notter's Pond, a serene waterfowl filled little lake, closed at sunset, no dogs allowed. Well, he's not a dog, he's a baby gorilla. Bleu. Bleu ate more than his share of stuffed cabbage. The V-8 juice made an excellent gravy. When the sun started to set we packed up and went to the Southern River Walk for a bottle of pinot noir and a session of Zen Word. Addictive. Our wait staff was very engaging and we had a great time introducing him to Bleu and learning about the community, he grew up here, not Bleu, the wait staff.
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Eloisa expressed concern about the weather and I saw we were in for a real treat. Morning thunderstorms terminating with a precipitous drop in temperature, rain, high winds ending up near freezing temperatures. I had to batten the hatches, put away perishables, and replenish the propane cylinders. Uh oh, our propane tank is out.
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I went out and exchanged the propane and started filling the little 1 lb tanks from the bigger tank. I wanted to have 3 of the little tanks ready for the precipitous temperature drop. I was coming down with something, sore throat, sneezy. I filled the little tanks one at a time, give them an hour apiece to fill.
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The next day I was watching the amazing cloud formations approaching. I was on the communal pandemic porch where I asked Steve, the environmentalist engineer about all the tools piled up on the free pile at the end of the porch. This is where boaters discard their unneeded gear, yes, he said, I'm cleaning out Rocky's shop of old tools. Tools, tool boxes, another boater approached, later, and asked if the tools at the end of the porch were free for the taking, yes, I said.
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The winds were increasing and impressive clouds were rolling in, like a big cold front with roll clouds, which is what it was. Pelts of rain would hit the tin roof and shed. Steve the environmentalist schooled me on how to clean up dirty harbors 9,500 gallons a minute. He's has built a big water cleaner. He left when the rain let up.
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It let up and then poured again. The winds were ferocious. A canopy that had withstood whatever weather was here during the hurricane season was overwhelmed and collapsed. I walked around and had to stand up to the wind. The river was covered with furious whitecaps. Time to hunker down. Gale.
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Rainwater got into my bunk. The result was damp bedding and difficulty getting a night's sleep. I ended up sleeping very late. Eloisa hit the road up to the mountains to aid her sister who was going through chemo. Merry Christmas. I had stuffed cabbage for breakfast.
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The cold weather relented and the boat dried out, it was actually warm again in the boatyard. Komputer Ken who is recovering from knee replacement surgery had his Bianchi bicycle serviced and now he has the go ahead from his surgeons to ride the bike. Unfortunately he is out of practice and dropped the bike before he even got going. We are planning to do a short ride later in the week.
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Finally, the NY Jets played the Jacksonville Jaguars and the game was on local TV. The Jets won, but both teams were 3-10 going into the game and there were too many penalties and dumb mistakes.
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The image is of a sunset with storm clouds coming in over St. Marys.