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“Do you not feel that somehow everything would be alright if you could just have a little bit of cabbage?”

(Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders)

I love it when old friends surprise you.

It's Spring in good earnest here in Lake Country. I'm already picking chives and sorrel, but it's going to be a while before we'll be seeing much in the way of new vegetables from the garden. So for the time being, we stick with those reliable old friends that have got us through the Winter, for just a little longer.

Well, cabbage is the witchiest of vegetables, anyway: potentially nasty and always surprising, with those undeniable grace notes of sulfur. What's not to love?

Here in the North Country, we eat lots of cabbage—it grows when nothing else will—and it's always good to meet that beloved old shape-shifter in a new and unexpected preparation.

Cabbage schnitzel are schnitzel only by courtesy—think potato pancakes made with cabbage instead of potato—but they're light, elegantly simple, and absolutely delicious.

Old Warlock's Cabbage Schnitzel

Aside from a pact with the Horned One, the secret to good health, long life, and eternal youth is to eat lots and lots of fresh vegetables: hence my decades-long Evil Plot to Get the Pagan Community Eating More Fresh Vegetables.

Not that it's been hard, you understand. Everybody likes good vegetables. In modern paganism's Potluck Culture, the bowl is always empty by the time I bring it home.

I first discovered Purple Pickle years ago while living in the Middle East. Every pickle-seller down at the souk would always have huge, eye-grabbing jars of pickled cabbage and cauliflower that glowed a radioactive neon-purple color.

Gods, I'd think. I don't know what they put in there to make it that color, but I don't think that it's something I want to eat.

More the fool, me. The dye, of course, is all perfectly natural.

Oh, and as for that pact with the Horned: let me recommend it.

Vegetables aside, it sure has worked for me.

Old Warlock's Purple Pickle

An apple a day has many health benefits and tastes good too! As I write this, I can smell the applesauce cooking in my slow cooker. Made from unpeeled, cut apples, and simmered a while with half cider and half water, to cover, my applesauce needs no further seasoning or sweetening. Once cooked, I put it through my trusty food mill—I picked mine up at a yard sale, however they are available both in stores and on the internet. The money you save on canned or otherwise processed applesauce will soon pay for the food mill and your applesauce will be more nutritious.

This is a good recipe for big, horsey, late-season asparagus, served either chilled or at air temperature: just the thing for a Midsummer picnic.

Sesame Asparagus in a Tamari Reduction

1 bunch asparagus

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

¼ cup tamari

¼ cup rice vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

How about a nice tall glass of lemonade on a hot summer day? If you make up some sugar syrup ahead of time, you can make some for yourself any time you wish. Simple syrup in your fridge, fresh lemons close at hand, ice cubes and a tall glass and you're good to go. Mix half to a whole squeezed lemon into a glass or perhaps a frosty mug, add simple syrup you make yourself, to sweeten, stir well and add ice.

 “Let food be your medicine.”

(attributed to Hippokrates of Kos)

I started this batch of pickled garlic back before Yule, and made the mistake of setting it out on the Yule board, well before its time.

Yikes. Each clove of garlic burned in the mouth like a red-hot glede.

Disappointed, I set the pickle aside and, basically, forgot about it.

Thank Goddess.

Last week I came across the jar again and, some five months on, decided to give it another try. “If ever my immune system needed a boost, it's now,” I thought.

Ohmigods.

No longer does the garlic burn: it's now like a kiss. Everything else tastes pallid by comparison.

So here's your chance to make your own. Just be sure to let it ripen well.

Yes, I know, I'm a son of Northern Europe living in Minnesota, and this is an Asian recipe. But you know what they say about warlocks.

We sure do get around.

Old Warlock's Kick-Ass Pickled Garlic

From the garden snacks

Even if you don’t go in for the fruit and veg plot in your garden you can still grow a few herbs or even eat some of the edible flowers and add them to recipes.