Another variation for ukrainian cabbage rolls: meat staffed cabbage rolls with gentle sour cream and onion sauce.
Making these from scratch will take some time as any recipe for cabbage rolls even if you use ground beef and don’t need to prepare it yourself, you still need to separate cabbage, assemble rolls and then cook them.
But don’t let this to stop you – even though it is time consuming to cook cabbage rolls you will get enough rolls for later – just store left overs in fridge or freezer.
Roast brussels sprouts are great as a side dish or a snack. They don’t require much of attention while cooking: just clean sprouts, put them to a baking pan, toss with oil, salt and pepper and roast until ready.
You can cook them to your liking: increase temperature a bit and you get crunchy outside and soft inside, decrease temperature and increase cooking time – get softer sprouts.
Hope you like them!
It is time for summer cookouts yet? I bet it is! Who said cookouts should be all meat and bread – add a bit of vegetables and crab sticks 
Napa gives this salad tender filling; however you can substitute white cabbage for napa – it will work fine, just remember to tenderize shredded cabbage with your hands.
If you use frozen crab sticks, make sure they unfreeze completely and all extra liquid is removed before adding them to the salad.
Lazy cabbage rolls, or “lenyvi golubtsi” how this dish is called in ukrainian, is an easier version of ukrainian cabbage rolls.
Since it doesn’t require assembling of rolls it is much easier to prepare, and taste is very similar to cabbage rolls.
Lazy cabbage rolls taste great when seasoned with a bit of chopped garlic and a bit of mayo.
Braised cabbage can be a nice meat-free dish on its own, however it also makes a good side dish for various meats, especially pork and sausages.
You can braise fresh white cabbage alone or mix of white cabbage with sauerkraut (1:1 proportion) to your taste. If you choose to use sauerkraut, rinse it with water before adding to the skillet.
Fresh tomatoes in this recipe can be replaced with tomato paste, if you don’t want to spend time blanching and de-seeding tomatoes.
I love cabbage. It is available in the stores whole year, and it somehow manages to preserve such important nutrient as vitamin C (and some others) till late winter. This makes cabbage a good choice of food when your body particularly needs more vitamins.
I consider this a winter salad: cabbage is available any time in the store, as well as chicken and cheese; but it will also taste great when prepared from fresh young cabbage, which is much softer and more juicier.
Additionally, I usually season this salad with dry bread cubes right before serving. I prepare them myself from leftover bread: just dice it and dry in the oven (can’t call them croutons, as they don’t have any seasoning or oil added in the process of preparation). But I guess you can use croutons from the shop instead or skip this part all together.
One of the challenges when cooking classic beet root soup, borscht, is to get all vegetables (and there are quite few) cooked till perfect readiness at the same time.
Considering different vegetables require different cooking time it is sometimes hard to achieve. For borscht you need to make sure beens are soft, while potatoes are not over cooked and beets don’t lose their color.
So, to make this happen: I cook beens in a separate cooking pot (just until they are soft and ready), cook beets skin on (like for salad) in separate pot in advance, and add these two to the main cooking pot at appropriate times.
By the way, using of canned beets and beens instead of cooking them yourself is an option (which I never did, but it may safe you some time).
