Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I bought a head of cabbage a week or two ago so that I could try this Roasted Cabbage with Lemon, and I decided tonight was the night.  I apparently had no idea what my pregnant brain and body were getting me into.

My first issue was relatively minor; I didn’t want the cabbage to stick, but I didn’t want that yucky sticky residue that comes from using Pam (or Kirkland’s comparable product), so I brushed the bottom of my pan with canola oil.  It wasn’t until I was halfway through that I thought–dang. What’s wrong with me?  I have PARCHMENT PAPER.  This oil was completely unnecessary.  And since I think it did give it a greasier feel, I’m still bummed at that mistake.  Although it pales in comparison to what happened next…

I used my 10 by 15 pan to put the cabbage wedges in, since there were 8 of them; it was actually kind of a perfect fit.  Here’s the thing.  It seems mostly like a 9 by 13 pan when you’re using it.  I have no trouble lifting a 9 by 13 pan by the corner, and so I didn’t think  much about the fact that the 10 by 15 is heavier, and my hands are small, and pregnancy makes all of your muscles relax…

You see where this is going, right?  Yep.  I couldn’t save it.  The entire pan of half roasted cabbage (I was taking it out to carefully flip the wedges) got away from me, bounced off the oven door, and fell upside-down onto my anti-fatigue kitchen flooring.  (Did I mention that it had been in a 450 degree oven?)  The positive?  I was not burned, and I am actually really, really grateful for that.   The negative, well…I scooped the cabbage leaves that weren’t dirty back into the pan, stuck it back in the oven, and then had to clean up the remaining leaves.  And the grease.  I then had to just stir the pan contents instead of flip, because there were certainly no wedges at that point–just most of a cabbage’s worth of loose leaves.  Here’s the thing, though.

I still liked it.  Even without the added lemon juice (no one else is as mad for lemon as I am, so I put in the called-for amount and reserved the rest of the juice the lemon yielded for my personal use), it had flavor; my husband said it was better than cauliflower, which means it wasn’t the worst vegetable he’d ever had, and my oldest said she liked it.  The boy was so tired at dinner he was angry at everything, but my middle gave it a thumbs middle and acknowledged that it would have been better warm.  (She was too transfixed by the educational Youtube videos that were distracting her brother enough for him to eat willingly; she ate very, very slowly.  No roasted veggie tastes fantastic cold.)  I want to try it again and see how proper execution affects the texture, but I was really fairly pleased.  (The surprise in that sentence isn’t for me–I figured I’d probably like it–but for my family.  I was honestly expecting it to bomb.)  There are other recipes for roasted cabbage on my Pinterest boards, and I’m thinking they are worth trying as well.

Next time I’ll get two hot pads and use both hands.