Cabbage & Butterfly

Last week Jim & I went to see Opera Hamilton's presentation of Madama Butterfly.

What a tear-jerker that is. The performances were top-notch and Ailan Zhu who played Butterfly has the voice of an angel. She gave me shivers. The whole thing was spectacular. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. If you've never been to live opera, you don't know what you're missing.
This isn't the performance I saw, but this is my favorite aria of the whole opera. Butterfly has been waiting 3 years for her beloved to return and she's singing to her maid about how she imagines their reunion will be. I find this part so sad because she's so hopeful.....


On the food front, I scored a massive cabbage at a terrific price and with those large leaves, made cabbage rolls. I had some frozen perogies that I cooked up with some onion, soy bacon bits & some Follow Your Heart mozzarella.

For the filling, I dig out my old Betty Crocker cookbook and use that recipe as a guideline. Instead of ground beef, I use Yves Veggie Ground and some extra spice to jazz it up a little. Cabbage rolls always turn out well for me, so I stick with this tried & true recipe.

Since I had a large cabbage, I also got some "little cabbages". I never used to like Brussel sprouts, but now love them! I par-boiled these, then baked them with a little olive oil, agave, salt & pepper. They turned out really yummy.
I've also been thinking about pineapple upside-down cake for weeks now and finally bit the bullet and made one.
Pineapple is another thing that, as a child, I would never eat. Now, I love it!

The top (or bottom, depending on how you look at it) it the best part of this cake. I love anything with butter & brown sugar (I use margarine with excellent results). Add nuts and I'm over the top.

This is another tried and true from a cookbook that I got from my mother years ago. It's never failed me. I used tofu instead of eggs and this cake came out so moist & delicious.

Did you happen to watch the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction? What a wide variety of musical artist they chose this year. I, of course, watched to see Jimmy Page induct Jeff Beck.

They've been life-long friends and played togther briefly in the Yardbirds...which morphed in a roundabout way into Led Zeppelin. After the speeches, they played together which is why I tuned in in the first place. Amazing guitarists, both of them.

(Quite different from Puccini, eh?)