Cabbage and Rice Pie

Kay is at soccer practice right now and it is very cold and starting to rain. Therefore, I'm going to type this up as quickly as possible before I get called to pick her up!

First of all we want to thank everyone who voted for our Paper Chef entry. We won the People's Choice!!

I received quite a bit of cabbage this week from the farm so I searched through all my old cookbooks for some new way to prepare it. I chose this recipe mostly because I had all the ingredients. Turns out we all liked it. Bill and Kay both told me it was good without me asking their opinions so that is a very good sign. Kay, I think, was just happy I finally made something without onions!

Cabbage and Rice Pie

adapted from Betty Crocker's Vegetarian Cooking

1 1/2 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

3 cups shredded green cabbage

2 cups frozen hash brown potatoes (we used the chopped)

1 1/4 cups uncooked instant rice

8 oz cream cheese, softened (we used soy)

1 teaspoon ground sage

1/2 package puff pastry, thawed

1 can tomato sauce + your choice of seasonings

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9 inch pie plate.

Heat the water to boiling in a medium saucepan. Stir in salt, pepper, cabbage and potatoes. Heat to boiling. Reduce to medium, cover and cook 5 minutes.

Stir in rice, cream cheese, and sage. Remove from heat, cover and let stand 5 minutes. Stir to mix all ingredients well. Pour into the pie plate.

Unfold the pastry sheet and place it over the cabbage mixture. Trim pastry to fit pie plate. Press edge of pastry onto pie plate with a fork.

Bake uncovered 25 minutes.

For sauce, heat one can tomato sauce with salt, pepper, Italian seasonings, etc to suit your taste.

Spread sauce on plate. Top with wedge of pie. Sprinkle additional sauce over the pie.

Kay: The cabbage thing was ok even though I don't really like cabbage. I think it would be good with spinach and would help my cousin Lily eat spinach. When we cut off the puff pastry from the edges, I wanted to eat it but my mom dipped them in cinnamon sugar and baked them. They were really good but hot. My mom said I was crazy.

Mom (Dana): This was really easy. I was worried about leftovers and how they would warm up. Bill worked late, though, and his warmed up fine. Just don't heat it too much - just enough to slightly warm it.

I'd recommend this cookbook to anyone, vegetarian or not. The recipes are very basic and "normal". No weirdo tempeh or tofu or other strange vegetarian things!!

Our special guest commenter, Dad (Bill): Amazingly enough, I actually like this puff pastry thing! (He's eating the leftovers right now!)