This week at the Hollywood Farmers Market I chose cabbage. Not just any cabbage but the tastiest most prized cabbage of the entire Brassicaceae/Cruciferae family. Savoy cabbage.

I live in Southern California. There are only a couple of weeks a year that are not considered “growing season” in my particular Sunset: Western Garden zone 23 neighborhood. And those couple of weeks usually fall in January. So you really need to adapt yourself to the season and choose things that are at their peak right now.

One of these things is cabbage. Cabbage is wonderful. It has a slightly spicy taste. It is very high in calcium, and very high in vitamin-C. So it really is a good choice for the “cold and flu season”!

But what do you do with cabbage?

Well have you considered cabbage soup? I know what you are thinking – “Cabbage Soup? What year do you think this is Greg”? Besides (you opine) cabbage cooks up all stinky and slimy.

When I do these things I usually start with an idea for a video. Sometimes it’s just some joke or visual reference that I like and I build the whole cooking video from that. Sometimes a particular recipe is called for to make the concept work, so I do that recipe. Other times, most any recipe will support the joke or theme and I pick something I want to cook. Then, once I get a finished video, something about it strikes a memory, or an opinion, or maybe some cultural reference I can build the written blog around.

Today, it started with an editorial I read in the L.A. Times by Gregory Rodriguez. He usually writes about cultural issues like race relations, ethnicity, and other complex human qualities detailing what it is to be part of the “New” America.