h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The German way to do red cabbage, which I learnt when an au pair is thus:

You cook the cabbage whole ( takes about 3/4 hour) and then chop it into strips. Then you further cook it adding vinegar, grated or chopped apples and onions, salt, pepper, sugar. It is very popular in winter and is always served with game or the traditional goose. So, to my teutonised ears, it seems strange to serve it with salmon.

The Germans say that this is one of the few dishes which improves with keeping and being re-heated. It ends up quite mushy.

I leave out the cooking whole part of the above, and just place the sliced cabbage in a saucepan with the other ingredients and cook for I don't know how long. It gives off a lot of liquid though - you need add no water. And the vinegar is wine vinegar - malt vinegar is unheard of here.

However, I can't imagine what vegetarian dish it would go with - I prefer to serve it sliced thinly, raw, as a salad with walnuts and mayonnaise etc.

As for buying things and then not having the energy to cook them, it's not quite so bad here - for example, I bought some stewing meat and some kidneys to make a steak and kidney pie yesterday. I was quite looking forward to this delicacy but German tradition dictates that you go to the cemetery on 1 November and revere your ancestors. It was a nice morning and it wasn't such a chore as usual, going to the cemetery, but we didn't get back till about 1.30, to be greeted by the smell of onions and meat cooking. My son had found the stewing steak (but not the kidneys) and had made a bit pot of goulash and some pasta and some spinach (we're trying to empty the freezer, so we're using up everything in it, there's lots of spinach in there, but fortunately, they all like spinach)

So even though my ambitious and work-intensive steak and kidney pie never made it to the table, the meat was at least cooked and used at the time planned for it, so none was wasted. Vegetables, fortunately, can wait a day or two in the fridge if I'm not up to doing them. And it's never too much bother just to chop them up and boil them or grate them and make a salad, even then. Never mind the stuffed courgettes or the fennel gratin or the pretty braised carrots I had planned.

What a ramble. I'm terrible when I get on to the subject of food - sorry!

Keep me posted on the veggie Christmas - I have a vegetarian daughter-in-law-to-be who I may have to cater for at some point over the holidays, too, so I'd like to treat her if I can.

Your recipe sounds delicious. How long is 'I don't know how long'. I think I would be afraid of the cabbage boiling dry. I might try this.

And yes, I'll let you know how I get on with my veggie Christmas plans.

If I don't cook here, no-one does. Well, that's not strictly true. When Merlin is here, he *sometimes* fries eggs for breakfast, and often puts out the cereal and chops melon for us and occasionally cooks porridge.

He loves meat, so it's a bit difficult for him while he's here. When we go out, he will order meat, but here, he eats vegetarian.

My family don't mind vegetarian. As the kids were small in the 80s and whole food and vegetarian food was all the rage, they are not meat-orientated at all.

Surprisingly, they don't seem to need large amounts of food either. Other mothers always told tales of their 16 -18 year olds needing three Schnitzel for lunch.

So we have a gratin, quiche or lasagne - no meat - at least once a week, an egg-based meal, and in the French tradition, I like to do a potage - a thick vegetable soup. There are endless versions of potatoes and cheese, and they are happy with cheese sandwiches once a day for a meal, too. Martin eats at lunchtimes at Uni and Patrick is doing his community service (obligatory here) and can have lunch at the local hospital for free. They usually cook themselves a pizza or a toasted cheese sandwich if they're desperate - again not meaty.

Vegetarian food fills you up more, usually, anyway. Lots of their friends are vegetarian and, provided I can use cheese and eggs, I'm quite happy feeding them all.

Problem with feeding little is that he's intolerant to dairy and wheat, so that rules out cheese sandwiches, quiche or lasagne. What would normally be fairly easy to manage gets more complicated when staples such as this are not available. Poor thing. He loves cheese.

When he was four, we went to Brittany on holiday and he really enjoyed the seafood there. His favourites were smoked salmon and mussels.

I think it's great that your kids are so well balanced. When we were out earlier today at a reiki group - the first meeting - he was fed vegetable soup and really enjoyed it.

The French Potage seems to be a good standby then, if bread and wheat products are out.

When I was au pairing in France, I lived out, but before I left EVERY NIGHT I had to peel a load of potatoes, and chop leeks and carrots for their evening potage. I put them on to boil and the lady of the house pureed them with a mixer. In the morning I had the washing up to do.

Celery gives a nice flavour and varying the vegetables varies the flavour of the soup anyway. You can make it in advance, make it in any amount required, make it thicker or thinner, sprinkle parsley on it. It is filling and warming (especially in the winter of course).

It is however no exaggeration that they ate this every night. Believe me, French home cooking is NOT imaginative.

If your little likes mussels, he will probably have no trouble with all the other funny looking things that many kids don't like (winkles, crab, prawns)

Prawn curry is nice - also quick to make. Can he eat rice?

The potage sound good. Even I can do this type of thing. And yes, he will eat crab, winkles he hasn't yet tried and he *loves* prawns. Won't your kids eat them?

Yes, he can eat rice, however he won't eat anything that's in the slightest bit spicy.

Oh yes, the other complication for Christmas is that Merlin can't eat nuts - they really disagree with him.

Christmas is coming up *so* quickly! I still haven't done any serious planning. I have promised Roy that we can go out to a carvery, as he would feel very hard done by if he couldn't eat meat at all over Christmas.

Just came across this while searching for mincemeat recipes for Nyssabird:

http://www.vegkitchen.com/xmas.html

It's American so needs some adapting, but even if you don't use any of the recipes, it's a nice site and the recipes are there straight away without a lot of mouse-clicking.

Thanks, TC.

Looks a great site. I could do with something that I don't put on lots of weight with. I've put on a bit of weight just recently, which I'm a bit disconcerted by. Christmas comes along with its tempting mince pies and Christmas cake and Christmas pudding and stollen and lebkuchen! Hard to resist.

I have to be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to catch the 6.25am to get to Birmingham. It's been ages since I've been there. It will be interesting to see what it's like these days. No Bull Ring, no Rotunda. I lived there as a student and then for the next several years, while I was married.