“I can’t believe that worked!” cabbage soup
Start by making a batch of vegetable stock. We used lots of beet greens and chard for ours, but there was a lot of “misc” ingredients too. It was kind of a sweep the fridge special.
Take 1 quart of the vegetable stock and add two quarts tomato juice (I ran some tomatoes from our garden through a juicer). Remember that you hate raw tomatoes, note how nasty it smells, and start worrying.
Chop up the cabbage anyway. You need one and a half small heads of red cabbage and one small head of chinese cabbage. Throw some chunks of carrot and celery in there too.
Still smells bad. If anything, it smells worse. Contemplate sudden trip to Wendy’s for dinner. Give it another 20 minutes and taste… tastes bland but still smells awful. Start googling for spices to put in cabbage soup. Decide on cumin, salt, and pepper.
Five minutes later, add two bay leaves.
Three minutes later, it smells wonderful and tastes… really interesting. Serve. Peggy likes it. W00t!
The next day, it tastes really good cold too.