my word is slaw

After making the venison winter stew, I had most of a head of cabbage left.  I only know three uses for cabbage (besides that stew): foil dinners (a Boy Scout thing, in which the cabbage is there mainly to keep your food off the foil, and almost never finishes the cooking time in an edible state), sauerkraut, and coleslaw.  I chose coleslaw.

The Lodge "A Skillet Full" cast iron cookbook has a few slaw recipes, because it's sort of Southern food, and the cookbook likes to think it's all Southern food.  I object to that, if only because Southerners can get pretty uppity about their food, and are often quick to tell anyone else that they are doing it wrong.  Barbecue doesn't have to be from North Carolina to be "real" or "good."  Get over yourselves.

Moving on.

I made Coleslaw With Cooked Dressing.  I thought I would scale it down, but it turns out that after I shredded the cabbage, I had the required 8 cups, so I made a full batch.

I should have scaled it down anyway.

It's not a creamy slaw.  I should have realized that from the ingredients, but I didn't expect the tartness of what I made.  It's more like the misbegotten offspring of sauerkraut and coleslaw, with none of the assets of either.  And it's a HUGE batch.

all the veggies, with just enough room in the bowl for the dressing, once I cook it.

I was also cruelly reminded of something I usually manage to avoid.  If you chop onions, you might get away with it.  Shredding onion on a mandolin weaponizes it, and shoots it directly into your eyes.  It's like cooking while someone pepper sprays you, and since that stage of cooking involves racing your fingertips back and forth over a set of sharp edges, it's terrifying on top of painful.  I washed my hands when I finished with the onion, but only so I could safely wash my face and eyes.

Specific Gravity: gets me every time.

The dressing was easy.  Mix and cook, dump over veggies.  Let sit in fridge several hours before stirring (it didn't make any sense to me, either, but I follow directions like a good little nerd).

There is enough slaw here to bury a full-grown man alive.  I know, because I did.

Obviously, that's way too much "healthy veggie" for any reasonable meal, so I melted a stick of butter and oven-fried some chicken in it to round out the meal.

sesame oven-fried chicken, also from the Lodge book.