Cabbage, sausage and noodles

This is going to be a previously never done, at least by me, triple post.

I am going to post this here today because I am making it here today.

I am also going to ante-post it to the date when the pictures were taken when I made this meal in Michigan in September.

And I am going to post it to the family cooking blog because this is cooking that I did (and am doing today) for members of the family.

So to start with, this is a pretty basic meal for which you might have most of the ingredients already on hand.  What you might not have is a cabbage.  I didn't have one today so I went out and got one.  Cabbage is a favorite here and I am always open to ways to introduce it into the regular rotation.

Here's what it looked like on September 12 in Michigan.  Note the most excellent slicing knife (the black handle) and the most excellent paring knife (white handle).  Good tools lead to good results.

So what we have there is a head of cabbage, a large onion, a ring of kielbasa, olive oil, butter, a couple of cans of stewed tomatoes and some ribbon noodles.

Basic stuff but it IS going to be good.

Start with the polish sausage, the white knife renders it into slices.  The slices go into the big pot with a healthy dollop of olive oil.  What we seek is the traditional "browning".

The slicing knife makes its first appearance to produce large onion pieces, I like my onion pieces large.

The browning has gone on for a bit, the onions are now added.  Here is where I also throw in that half stick of butter.

At this point the big pan is beyond the merely browning stage and is now in the starting to add flavor stage.  At this point butter is good.

The slicer has been busy again (what a great knife!).  About half of the cabbage has been reduced to cooking size.  The polish sausage and onion mixture looks like it could easily support some big pieces of cabbage.

Throw in the cabbage, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes, enough time to steam cook the cabbage.

Time to start the noodles.  I cooked the whole package but I intend to use a little bit less than half.  The rest will have to be consumed in other ways.  Too many noodles overwhelm the cabbage.  You want some noodles but need to keep in mind that this is a cabbage dish.

Time to start throwing it all together.

My experience is that a couple of cans of stewed tomatoes are going to provide just exactly what this concoction needs.

Mix it all together, you can probably turn off the heat at this point.  Everything is warm, it will continue to cook on its own.

I don't have this today but in Michigan we had the ingredients for a highly qualified person to produce a side salad.

Sausage, cabbage and noodle hot dish with fresh salad.

The pictures are from Michigan and today in Minnesota we did not have the salad.

It was really good both times.