Dinner

Here's one of the recipes I tried the other day.. once again, I'm not sure the picture makes them look all that great, but they were! They are 250 calories per serving if you use ground turkey instead of ground beef (which works out to be 3) It cost me about $5 (including the corn) since I already had a few things on hand, like the rice, garlic and lemon juice. Easily serves 4. Even if you aren't a fan of cabbage rolls, you might like it, because there isn't really much of a cabbage taste.

Cabbage Rolls

What you'll need:
12 Cabbage Leaves
1 lb ground turkey (recipe calls for ground beef, I substituted turkey)
1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce
1/2 cup uncooked instant rice (I accidentally used regular rice, was a little crunchy still)
1/2 ts salt
1/8 ts pepper
1 medium onion chopped (about 1/2 cup)
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 can (4 oz) mushroom pieces and stems, undrained
1 ts sugar
1/2 ts lemon juice
1 tb cornstarch
1 tb water

What to do:
1. Cover cabbage leaves wtih boiling wtaer. Cover and let stand about 10 minutes or until leaves are limp. Remove leaves; drain. *This was the hardest part for me, separating the leaves and keeping the whole. Some of them ripped, but i was still able to use them. (The recipe suggests removing the core from the head of cabbage first and letting the cabbage stand in cold water for 10 minutes before separating the leaves. That didn't work very well for me)

2. Heat oven to 350 degrees.

3. Mix ground meat, rice, 1/2 cup of tomato sauce, salt, pepper, onion, garlic, and mushrooms. *I added some red pepper/cayenne, and we all felt like the mixture needed something else, like chopped up bell pepper maybe.

4. Place about 1/3 cup mixture at stem end of each leaf. Roll leaf around mixture, tucking in sides. Place cabbage rolls, seam down, in ungreased square baking dish 8x8x2 inches. They fit perfectly for me, snuggly.

5. Mix remaining tomato sauce, the sugar and lemon juice; pour over cabbage rolls.

6. Cover and bake about 45 minutes or until mixture is no longer pink in center. *I had trouble with this because ground turkey doesn't cook the same as beef, but it was done after the 45 min

7. Remove cabbage rolls to platter/plate. Pour liquid in baking dish into a saucepan. Mix cornstarch and water; stir into liquid. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly (like you would if you were making gravy) Boil and stir 1 minute. Pour sauce over cabbage rolls.