Win, Lose, or Get Creative

Sometimes gardening, like politics, is the art of compromise.

Our cabbages have been under constant attack from every pest known to woman throughout the spring and summer growing season. Cabbage worms, harlequin bugs, and slugs have been the most destructive, with rolypoly bugs sometimes joining the fray.

Now that the bugs and slugs have had all summer to multiply and establish themselves, its been getting downright dangerous to be a brassica in our cabbage patch.

We have harvested some nice big heavy cabbages (as you can see in my last post) but the nail-biting question of whether the pests or the gardeners would triumph finally got to be too anxiety-provoking for me and I looked for a "third way." After managing for months to fend off armies of small creatures who like cabbage as much as I do, I finally gave up and decided not to wait until all of the cabbages are "normal" cabbage-sized. I've never been too interested in normalcy anyhow.

So I harvested a bunch of tiny cabbages yesterday. One of the smallest is pictured at the top of this post.

Baby cabbages make perfectly fine cole slaw and kraut, I've discovered. They are nice and tender, and just darn cute.

Here's an approximation of the slaw recipe that I use:

Classic Cole Slaw

Ingredients

• A bunch of cabbage of any size (about 4 cups chopped)
• 4 or 5 good-sized carrots
• 2-4 Tbs. of raw apple cider vinegar
• 1 Tbs. of honey
• Mayonnaise to taste (I use about a cup per four cups of chopped cabbage)
• 1 tsp. high-quality salt
• Lots of freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Finely chop cabbage and carrots. I use a food processor for this, but you can do it by hand.
2. Mix everything together in a big bowl.
3. Chill in the fridge, allowing the flavors to meld for at least 30 minutes before serving.
4. Enjoy!

Cole Slaw on Foodista: