I garnered a very low opinion of pretty much all vegetables during childhood that persisted well into adulthood, because I grew up in a household that only ever prepared them one of two ways: raw, or boiled.

Doesn’t matter what it was. Carrots, peas, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, green beans… the two exceptions being onions (which may have been fried on occasion) or potatoes (which culinarily aren’t in the same category). If it was boiled, there’d be a half-assed attempt to make it taste like something again by melting a knob of butter on it and salting it. That’s it.

When that’s the extent of your culinary range, cabbage has no reason to enter the house, so for us it never did. We just assumed it would be shit if you prepared it that way. And we were probably right. Boiled cabbage is what the poor Bucket family was said to have eaten every day in Willy Wonka. Doesn’t paint a glamorous picture.

I’m only just now coming around to the concept of vegetables tasting good when you, like, y’know, actually cook them well. Haven’t given cabbage a fair shake yet, though.

I used to hate cabbage because my father boiled the crap out of it with corned beef every St. Patrick’s Day. Disgusting.

Then I discovered stir fry, okonomiyaki, kimchi. Now it’s a favorite.

I’ve become a cabbage hater. Cabbage soup smells like cabbage farts and it actually makes me gag.

And farts.