Kitchen Misadventures: Bubble 'n' Squeak

What, you've never heard of Bubble 'n' Squeak? Just kidding, I hadn't either, until I started Googling "what to do with cabbage" that is! Then I found this:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/bubble-n-squeak/

Which turned out to be pretty good! On the first day anyway, but I'll get to that in a sec. It turns out that it is called Bubble 'n' Squeak because while you're making it the potatoes bubble and the cabbage squeaks. Cute, eh? Also noteworthy is that in Googling the correct usage of 'n' (is it 'n or n'?) I discovered that it is actually 'n'! I did not know that. The thought is that you replace the letters removed from the word with an apostrophe, so since you're removing both the a and the d from and, you end up with 'n'. Go figure.

Anyway, I feel like this was a fairly successful venture into the world of cabbage. If you read up on Bubble 'n' Squeak at all, you'll find that it's a British recipe intended to use up leftovers. It's basically potatoes (baked or mashed, there are versions with either), cabbage, whatever spices you feel like throwing in there, and whatever leftover vegetables or meat you happen to have in the refrigerator at the time. It is often served as part of a full English breakfast. Sticking fairly close to the above recipe, I made mine with baked potatoes, cabbage, ham, bacon, salt and pepper.

 

I've never cooked with cabbage before and the insecty-looking holes in this one were weirding me out, so I Googled (how would I live without Google?). It said to soak it in salty water for a while to get any buggies out. I did, and none came out, so I hope it was ok?

Below are my dedicated helpers in this project! Kizzi on the left and Sammy on the right. Kizzi belongs to me, Sammy was just visiting for the weekend. I'm pretty sure they were less interested in my vegetable project and more just hoping I would drop something for them to eat.

So I baked the potatoes, cubed them, cut up and cooked the cabbage until it got tender, cooked the bacon, ham and onion together in a little olive oil, and then threw everything together in a skillet.

I'm happy to report that the Bubble 'n' Squeak tasted good! I actually liked it, and ate a bowl full. I liked the taste of the cabbage, though I probably should have cooked it a little more so it was more thoroughly tender.

Because I had oranges galore, I peeled and cut up an orange, threw it in a spinach salad with some walnuts and Brianna's dressing and had a lovely side salad for this meal as well.

The only downside here is that I did not like the Bubble 'n' Squeak on day 2. I'm pretty texture sensitive with food and biting down on some of the less cooked cabbage kinda made me gag :/ As a single person household, I run into the day 2 problem a lot. I had already cut this recipe down to about a third of what it originally called for, and I still had enough left for like 3 more meals that just didn't happen. How to solve this problem?

Still, I'm counting this one as a success!