Kraut Rocks!

Krautwickel mit Kichererbsen
(Cabbage Leaves Stuffed with Giggly Peas)
for Bloggeraid

It has bothered me for quite some time that here we are, blogging away in foodieland,not just feeding ourselves and families (too much in my case), but arranging food, photographing it, celebrating it as an art form, and virtually sharing it and our food-related verbosity, when out there – in the real world – people are still dying of starvation. According to Wikipedia, there was an increase of 80 million since 1990, despite the fact that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone - 6 billion people - and could feed double . Every second, 1 person dies as a result of hunger, which accounts for a staggering 58 % of all deaths. Every 5 seconds, 1 child dies as a result of hunger - 60% of all child deaths.

(I'll let you digest that for a moment)

So, I was more than pleased when I stumbled over an organisation called Bloggeraid.

This international group of food bloggers - the brainchild of Ivy, Val and Giz - is trying to address the problem of World Famine by raising awareness as well as money throughout the food communities and beyond. One of the ways to achieve their mission of "helping to make a change in a world where starvation affects such a profound number of people" is to publish a cookbook, the entire profits of which will be directed to the School Meals programme of the World Food Programme (WFP - the UN's front line agency).The School Meals programme does not just target the issue of famine, it simultaneously addresses poor school attendance. How? The chance of at least one meal per day will, it is hoped, motivate parents to send their children to school, rather than keep them at home to work. Girls in particular are often relied upon to look after younger siblings and thus denied a chance to obtain an education. The "take-home ration" - for instance a sack of rice or a can of cooking oil - which the pupil can take home for the family, benefits particularly such girls. Programmes such as this one can double the attendance in Primary Schools in the poorest countries in the world.

What an absolutely marvellous campaign to be involved in! Ivy, Val and Giz have been extremely busy collecting fellow bloggers' recipes since January, in order to have the Bloggeraid cookbook for sale at Amazon by November/December 2009. Today is the deadline, so let's see, why I have chosen cabbage for my recipe.

Well, the call was for an original recipe, maybe inspired by your home country. I am originally from Germany, and what could be more fitting than something made from 'Kraut', i.e. cabbage? Stuffed Cabbage Leaves are very traditional, typically served at home, or, if you're lucky, at lunchtime (the usual time for a hot meal in Germany) as one of the hearty dishes on the specials menu of a pub or restaurant. However, this is normally a meat dish, and I had long wanted to create a vegetarian version, in particular one where the stuffing did not include rice, which The Boy does not eat.

So, this was the outcome:

The stuffing

... made from chickpeas and mushrooms. The irony being: he doesn’t eat mushrooms either, and isn’t too fond of chick peas (not even the translation to “giggly peas” made him feel more inclined towards them).

The 'olives'/'roulades'/'parcels'

Unaware of the ingredients (oh, you have to be so crafty with teenagers sometimes...), he rated them as ‘very good’, something I have never achieved with a Vegetarian dish before!

This is all I am going to say about the recipe at this point. If you want to know exactly how it is done, you will have to wait for the cook book.

PS: Thank you to Angela who reminded me only recently that chickpeas are funny in German, on Lola's site.