Cabbage rolls | January 7, 2026

Happy New Year! I finished out 2025 with two weeks of PTO during which I planned a totally attainable list of to-dos and did virtually none of it. We have velvet dining chairs in our kitchen, for example, and I was going to clean them; I did not. I was going to watch a bunch of videos on how to shape my eyebrows and see if I could do anything with whatever was happening on my face; no dice. I was going to organize my 500+ stories on this website into categories and see if any of those compilations were worth turning into a book; nope. Speaking of books, I was going to read three of them; I read one, which is not really an impressive number of books when you are a literate adult with hours upon hours of reading time available to you.

When we were in Saskatchewan, I got into a semi-lengthy discussion with my father-in-law and brother-in-law about cabbage rolls. The conversation started with a comparison of Ukrainian cabbage rolls (no rice) versus Polish cabbage rolls (rice), peaked with a question about rice cookery, and ended with me proclaiming that I was going to use my vacation to test three cabbage roll recipes and report back the winner for the good of the family.

I did not.

However, the good thing about cabbage rolls and reading books is that there’s never really a wrong time for either, and so I decided that I would make cabbage rolls on Monday night with the intention of eating, and judging, them on Tuesday.

Here’s the long and the short of our Saskatchewan cabbage roll discussion:

“Cabbage rolls are pretty easy,” my father-in-law said. “You mix cooked rice and ground beef and then roll the whole thing in sour cabbage and cover it with tomato sauce.”

“Why do you need to cook the rice?” I asked. “Wouldn’t the sauce cook it?”

My father-in-law considered that.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Would it get too dry?”

“My mom used to pour tomato juice over her cabbage rolls,” my brother-in-law added. “I wonder if that would cook it.”

“I’ll try it,” I told them. “I’ll make one set of cabbage rolls with cooked rice, another with uncooked rice and extra liquid, and a third with uncooked rice, extra liquid, and sauerkraut because we spoke earlier about trying a version with sauerkraut and so I’m mentioning it now in case I decide to write a story about this and I need to reference a conversation that didn’t happen at this point in time.”

“Let me know how it goes,” my brother-in-law said.

Fast-forward to this past Sunday, when I was standing in the grocery store and it dawned on me that I’d never seen “sour cabbage” or “pickled cabbage” or “anything but regular cabbage” for sale and I didn’t remember the actual recipe besides what I’d typed above.

“C’est la vie,” I thought, tossing a cabbage into my cart.

Here’s the recipe I decided to use, which I made up in my head as I was rolling down vegetable aisle:

Cut the tough center spine out of the cabbage and boil the leaves in bone broth and salt until soft, which would not be as good as pickled cabbage but would hopefully taste like salty cabbage.
Saute ground beef, ground sausage (because I like ground sausage), and onion in whatever spices come into my heart in the moment and then divide that mixture into three.
Into the first pile, mix cooked rice.
Into the second pile, mix uncooked rice.
Into the third pile, mix uncooked rice and sauerkraut.
Roll the first pile into cabbage rolls and cover those with tomato sauce.
Roll the second and third pile into cabbage rolls and cover those with tomato juice.
Bake for…an hour? Or whatever.
Cool, refrigerate, reheat, and eat.

I started off on the wrong foot because I overboiled the cabbage leaves and they kept falling apart, but then I got back on the right foot because it turned out that boiled cabbage leaves are sticky and can be layered and melded together to make sheets of cabbage. Also, I realized after I de-cabbaged the bone broth that I had a perfectly good soup base on the go, so I chopped up the remaining cabbage when I was done and added in celery, onion, and frozen wontons and boiled that and made soup. I rolled everything into rolls and covered them in sauce (and more sauerkraut for the sauerkraut ones) and put them into the oven for an hour at 350 degrees.

And here’s the verdict: They were all great.

The tomato sauce ones looked more like cabbage rolls because they had tomato-y topping. The ones with juice looked like rolled cabbage. The sauerkraut ones tasted more like sauerkraut than the others, obviously, but it wasn’t a dramatic difference. The rolls with the uncooked rice were slightly firmer than the ones with the cooked rice, but not by much. If I make them again, which I will, I’ll probably do the uncooked rice with tomato juice, but then also put tomato sauce on top because I thought the rice with the tomato juice was more flavorful (by degrees; they honestly tasted very similar, even the sauerkraut ones), and then add sauerkraut to the top of half of them for people who want some pizzazz.

Whew, what a success! Checked something off of the ol’ list, ate cabbage rolls, and solved a problem that never existed. What a great start to a new year.

Sometime in November, Kyle built our aforementioned backyard rink. He pulled the boards out of storage, wrapped them in plastic sheeting, and spent day and night watering said plastic with a garden hose to create layer after layer of ice. More than once during this process it snowed, and so mostly Kyle, but sometimes also our sons, diligently snowblowed and shoveled off the rink so the watering could recommence. He hung work lights. He painted lines. He built a bench. Finally, on New Year’s Eve, the rink was ready. It’s already gotten a lot of use. The photo above is of my rink builder.

This week on North Dakota Today we talked about the Forde Family and Enough with the Stigma, my Nice People/Organization of the Week, as well the Patriot Fish Fest. (Valley News Live)

A group of Minot “Folding Angels” have made and donated over 120,000 cards to jails and prisons across the state. (KFYR TV)

A 13-year-old from Hettinger named Khloe is taking the cat world by storm. (KFYR, found via Oops Only Good News)

Buxton’s Brent Vigen can now add a FCS national championship win to his resume. (Valley News Live)

Homeowners, remember to apply for a tax credit. (Grand Forks Herald)

This isn’t in North Dakota, but it’s on brand for North Dakota: a Wisconsin coach built a hockey rink in his backyard so his team of 10-year-olds could practice. (Valley News Live)