Cabbage Rolls (For Maxine)

I'm not Ukrainian or well versed in Ukrainian cooking so if anyone has any other suggestions for this, let me know.

Go get yourself some:
ground meat (bison, beef or venison would be lovely)
1lb of good quality bacon
a head of sour cabbage
a spaghetti squash
a bunch of fresh tomatoes
tomato paste
an onion or two
lots of garlic
some chili pepper flakes (or chili-garlic sauce)
sea salt and fresh pepper


1.  Fry up your bacon.  Set aside the fat and crumble up the cooked bacon.  Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Cut your spaghetti squash in half, remove the seeds, rub with some bacon fat. and roast in the oven for about 40 minutes or until the flesh is tender and you can easily flake it apart.

2. Dice up your onions.  In a frying pan, add some bacon fat, then saute the onions until they are translucent.  Add your garlic and your meat.  Fry the meat until it is cooked.  You can add seasoning to the meat if you wish (I add pepper, pepper flakes, onion powder, garlic powder and whatever else seems like fun at the time).  Remove from heat and add your crumbled bacon pieces.

3.  Take your head of sour cabbage and rinse it really well.  Separate out the leaves and set aside.

4.  Chop up your tomatoes, toss into a sauce pan along with tomato paste.  Add your spices (same as what's in the meat will work but especially something to give it a bit of heat).  Heat over low to medium heat until it starts burbling a bit and the tomatoes juice out nicely.  Remove from heat.

5. Rescue your spaghetti squash from the oven.  Allow to cool a little bit before flaking all of the flesh off of the rind.  This is your pretend rice.

6.  Take a leaf, put some of the meat mixture in the middle and a bit of spaghetti squash.  Roll up the leaf and put in a casserole dish or roaster.  Continue doing this until you run out of ingredients.

7.  Smother the entire thing in the tomato mixture, cover with some tin foil and then roast in the oven at 350 until they look, smell and taste done.  Not sure how long that is.

Enjoy!