CABBAGE AND BEEF CASSEROLE

I never realized how much I enjoy cooking until I started doing this blog.  I look forward to making a good dish that I can share on here - whether you all are interested or not - it makes me happy.   I get bored easily with meals, so I like to make different things all the time.

My good friend, Shari, makes an ethnic dish that she shared with me many, many moons ago - haloopkis (hal-oop-keys), which is basically ground beef "meatballs" with cabbage leaves wrapped around them and baked in tomato sauce.  Now, I know I did not spell this correctly and probably am not even saying it correctly, but even my spell check could not help me here, so please forgive!  Shari and her family made these on Christmas Eve because I saw her pictures on face book, and it reminded me of the day that she gave me and some of our other wonderful friends a lesson on the way to properly make these.  Oh I miss those days!  ~sigh~

This is kind of my own rendition of this dish made simple for a mother of toddlers and a woman with a short attention span :-).

Here's what I did:

Cook 1/2 head of cabbage (chopped up in bite sized pieces) until tender.
1 lb. extra lean ground beef
1 cup dry brown rice (cooked in 2 cups water)
      cook until water is just absorbed
1 small onion
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
1 cup beef broth - maybe more
2 bay leaves
2 cloves garlic
1 T. Italian seasonings
1 tsp. garlic powder
salt and pepper
I also chopped up in small pieces some carrots for color and added veggies.


I cooked the beef, garlic,and onion together, then added the tomato sauce and diced tomatoes and beef broth with all the spices.  After the cabbage was tender, I added it all together with the "al dente" rice in a 9x13 pan with the beef mixture. (If you have extra water left with the cabbage, add it in the dish - it gives you the extra nutrients from the cabbage).  If it is a bit dry, add some more beef broth. Give it a good stir and bake for about 45 minutes at 350.  You want it kind of "soupy" because the rice will continue to absorb the liquid.

I added all this into my WW online calculator and listed it as 8 servings.  It came up as only 4 points per serving!!!!  Wow-it was so satisfying that I actually feel guilty only counting 4 points!  


I served this with some homemade bread and some cooked carrots.


If you know how to correctly spell "haloopkis", please let me know