Cabbage Rolls and Other Ways to Say I Love You

There may technically be other ways. But none higher than cabbage rolls.

May 2022

Cooking is one of my favorite love languages. I think it technically falls under the “Acts of Service” umbrella, but having a hearty home-cooked meal really does it for me. Though I recognize that’s pretty close to universal. It certainly wasn’t the case for me early on, however, but as my life progressed three very specific experiences anchored a good meal prepared with love as my personal soul-stealer.

The powers that be blessed my mother in many ways, but cooking was not one of them. The woman could burn water. Hamburger Helper was too high a hurdle - what I’m saying is she was a great mother but a terrible cook. In her defense, she hadn’t been gifted with any sort of culinary weaponry that would cause you to expect otherwise. There were few shreds of normalcy in her own childhood and proper homecooked meals made with love weren’t among them. She had just turned 17 when she had me, and it was the early 1970s - not exactly a golden era of home cookery. So expectedly, about 95% of what I ate growing up was from a can, a box, a freezer, a microwave, or a fast-food window.

Then at the age of 16, I dated a gal whose mother was, shall I say, Martha Stewart-esque in the best possible ways. A domestic ninja, sans the smugness and penchant for felonious record-keeping. A kindhearted, jovial woman that cooked meals for me that awoke my palate from its beige food-induced slumber and made my soul sing. Technically those meals were for her family and I was just along for the ride, but you get it. Not only were the meals delicious, but there was also a feeling of warmth and comfort that accompanied every single offering.

I had never experienced anything like it. It wasn’t just the one-of-a-kind ceramic crocks that the soups were served in either. In retrospect, I’m quite sure that my presence became an issue that bordered on harassment. While I was definitely fond of the young lady, I was over at her house ALL THE TIME on the off-chance her mother was whipping up an afternoon snack or that I might be able to charm an extra setting at the dinner table into existence. My own family had been all but abandoned.

The second experience occurred while I was in the military and stationed in Las Vegas. One of the patients regularly seen in the clinic where I worked, was a young teenage lady who was brought to every appointment by her mother. A tender-hearted woman who had met the patient’s father years ago when he was stationed in Italy. It was through a heavy Italian accent that this angel would regularly invite me for Sunday dinner at their home.

It was absolutely everything you could hope for or imagine, and it opened up an entire world of next-level shit for me - because now there were family traditions from faraway lands thrown into the mix of a wonderful meal made with love. So there I was, a 23-year-old Airman who more than once contemplated the viability of asking a retired officer for permission to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage once she turned of age. Those were some very powerful braciole.

By the time Kara and I got together, I was giving culinary tours around Portland and writing about food and drink regularly for work. I was surrounded by wildly fresh and creative cuisine thanks to the fact that I was living in the Willamette Valley and on a new career path that often had me exploring that bounty. Despite the late start, I now possessed a fully blossomed appreciation for cuisine in its many forms. Then on New Year’s Eve of our first year together, Kara made Haluki.

Though written as Haluki in her notes, I believe the technical spelling is Halupki. Regardless, they are the cabbage rolls that Kara would make with her grandfather on New Year’s Eve, in accordance with his unique, traditional family recipe. A recipe that, until recently, only she retained having jotted down a rough outline for it years ago. And I mean rough. Because as is the case with so many recipes passed down from generation to generation, these cabbage rolls were typically handcrafted over the course of numerous bottles of red wine, while the measurements of ingredients added were adjusted until the batch “looked right” or “smelled right.” 

Curiously though, her family’s version was different than any other rolls I’d encountered prior. The sauce wasn’t red - no tomatoes, no paprika. I was accustomed to boiled leaves of cabbage stuffed with some sort of meat and rice mixture served in or topped with, a red sauce. What I watched her so dutifully construct were basically the same in content, but cooked in a white sauce consisting of layers of sauerkraut and broken-up bacon, bathing in a pork fat roux. For hours, they simmered slowly in a large, stainless steel vat with a custom metal grate sitting at the bottom to prevent burning - constructed by her grandfather, of course.

One of Kara’s perfect rolls

They were instantly the best cabbage rolls I’d ever consumed. I bodied that vat o’ cabbage rolls like the antidote was hiding in the sauerkraut at the bottom. This dark temptress had delivered a death blow to any resistance I might offer by unwittingly incorporating all of the elements from my previous two life-changing food/love experiences into something new. And then topping it off with a fresh layer of “Hey there, I’m the lady you just fell ass over teakettle for…..want seconds?” There would be no escape.

Whatever the ratios were within the magical proprietary blend of her love for me, my love for her, and the culinary viability of her family halupki recipe, they combined perfectly to produce my all-time favorite dish. I consider it an honor to have been on the receiving end of this annual gift and even participate in its production with the woman who carried its torch for her family, and who I loved so completely.

Luckily, I was able to watch again and, in small ways, assist when she showed her brother how to make them over FaceTime shortly before her passing. She recited the recipe and showed off all of the tips and tricks she had acquired through the years of making them for overly-eager family members and one particular sunhat. I took a photo of her handwritten recipe years ago, just in case something ever happened to it.

One of the few things I was able to salvage from what was the kitchen of our home, was the family halupki pot, along with the custom metal grate her grandfather made. It’s on its way back to its rightful home with her family in Pennsylvania. But it would be nice to visit sometime for New Year’s, drink wine, and engage in a friendly debate with her brother over how much bouillon should go into the meat mix. Then we can both get “Haluki Forever” tattooed in some Slovak-looking font across our chests, or cabbage roll tramp stamps, or whatever.

*Edit* And that’s exactly what happened on New Year’s Eve 2022. Well, except for the tattoos. The last photo in this post is of Kara’s brother and I futilely attempting to replicate her rolling style, while I also attempt to keep the charm bracelet her niece gave me out of the mix.