Celebrate March by Eating Cabbage
Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable
about as large and wise as a man's head.
- Ambrose Bierce
This is the time of year that cabbage (green), potatoes (white), and carrots (gold) grace the tables of many Irish Americans and Canadians. They are usually accompanied by tender slices of corned beef although boiled ham or bacon might be a more accurate version of a typical Irish meal. Last month we talked about potatoes, the white part of our vegetable flag. This month we talk about the green – cabbage.
Cabbage family foods are sometimes called cruciferous or brassica vegetables after their scientific family and genus. In addition to cabbage, brassica vegetables include broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi and kale.
The cruciferous vegetables are what researchers call a functional food. This means it contains biologically active chemicals that can serve a medicinal role in the body. Green cabbage contains two such compounds dithiolthione and isothiocyanate that help to detoxify carcinogens. It also contains another compound called indol-3-carbinol that affects estrogen metabolism and appears to protect women from estrogen-related cancers such breast and uterine cancer.
Cabbage family foods also are full of nutrients. Babies may not come from cabbage patches but a healthy baby comes from a mother who eats lots of cabbage and other leafy greens. These vegetables contain the B vitamin folate, which is necessary for growth, and low levels of folate in the mother can cause birth defects in her baby.
Folate is especially important for those of Celtic ancestry, a population who is at risk of having high blood levels of homocysteine. This toxin can damage the arteries and lead to atherosclerosis and heart disease. Luckily, folate prevents this toxin from forming.
The cruciferous vegetables are also a good source of vitamin C, a water soluble antioxidant that protects the watery areas of the body from free radical damage. Finally, they are good sources of both soluble and insoluble fiber, which may explain how these vegetables prevent colon cancer.
Cabbage is a versatile vegetable: you can eat it raw as coleslaw or cook it by quickly boiling or steaming the leaves. Cooking cabbage has a very distinctive odor that develops as the sulfur in the leaves is released. You can minimize the odor by cooking leaves quickly in lots of boiling water and adding either a rib of celery or several lemon slices.
If you have a juicer, don't be afraid to juice green cabbage; it has a surprisingly mild taste. Just make sure you drink it right away; cabbage juice like cabbage leaves does not age gracefully. Cabbage juice has been used to heal a variety of gastrointestinal complaints including ulcers.
Sláinte has first hand experience with the latter and drank several glasses of fresh cabbage juice a day to help heal her duodenal ulcer. She learned the hard way that you should only try this after you have been on traditional drug treatment for at least a week. Cabbage juice can make an open ulcer sting like mad.
Not only is cabbage a good medicine internally, it is said to be of use externally too. In European folk medicine, cabbage is often called the poor man's poultice. Some physicians in Britain still recommend a whole cabbage leaf as an effective poultice for any swollen or inflamed body part.
British breastfeeding counselors still recommended that their mothers put a cabbage leaf in each bra cup to soothe engorged painful breasts. Next time the arthritis in your knee acts up, wrap a cold cabbage leaf around it and let Sláinte know how it worked.
In Ireland, cabbage is often eaten as part of a dish called colcannon, which is made by mixing mashed potatoes, chopped cooked cabbage or kale, onions, hot milk and seasoning to taste. In England, cooked cabbage and potatoes are fried to create a traditional dish called “bubble and squeak.”
Just like cabbage, colcannon has some external applications too. In some parts of Ireland, on Halloween the first and last spoonfuls of colcannon were put into a girl's stocking which was then hung on the door. The first man through the door was the man the girl would marry.
Another custom was to blindfold the girl and send her outside to the garden to pull up a cabbage. The size and shape of the root was said to tell her about the size and shape of her husband.
If the cabbage was dried up and withered, so would be her husband. However, if the root was large and well shaped, she was deemed a very lucky girl. His temperament could be determined by the center or heart of the cabbage.
If the heart tasted sweet, her husband would be sweet too. If it was bitter, so would he be. The amount of soil attached to the roots determined his financial standing. If there were a lot of earth still stuck to the roots, her husband would be rich and generous. If there were but a little, he would be stingy and poor.
In Scotland there is a wedding tradition called kaling. Unmarried guests race to see who can reach a head of cabbage or kale first. The winner is guaranteed a good looking spouse.
Who knew how valuable the lowly cabbage could be to your health and happiness. Whether you choose to eat it or wrap your breasts in it, celebrate March with cabbage.
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