Today I am combining two recipes for Golabki. Sometimes I get an idea for a cuisine that I haven’t made in a while and do a search. I was really interested in Polish this time because the Polish Bigos turned out so well. Golabki is a Polish cabbage roll that is placed in a tomato sauce. The filling is rice with meat. I came across two recipes that I liked, one for the method and the other for the healthy ingredients. The one from Taste of Home uses a slow cooker, which is great, but also uses jarred spaghetti sauce. That is is high in sodium and also converted rice, which it just parboiled rice. Converted rice is almost always white rice. If we are doing this in a slow cooker, there is enough time to cook brown rice. The other from Food.com has better ingredients, but makes rolls. Not that I have a problem making cabbage rolls, but it is too involved right now due to my time schedule. That’s why I believe the method of one and the ingredients of the other will work well. Of course these will be tomato free and vegetarian. Here are the original stats:

Here’s what I changed:

• I deleted the added sodium to reduce the overall sodium
• I deleted the tomato products and replaced with pumpkin puree to delete the tomatoes and increase the vitamin A.
• I replaced the cooked white rice with brown to increase the nutritive value.
• I deleted the meat and replaced with textured vegetable protein to make this vegetarian and most closely resemble ground meat.

Here are the final stats:

Here is the final recipe:

Slow Cooker Golabki

Serves 8

• 1 head cabbage
• 1 cup textured vegetable protein (TVP)
• 2 cups cooked brown rice
• 2 eggs
• 4 garlic cloves
• 1 large onion
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons marjoram
• 1 tablespoon thyme 
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 2 15 ounce cans pure pumpkin puree
• 4 cups of water

In a large skillet melt two tablespoons of butter over medium heat, cook  onion and garlic until the onion is browned.  Stir in the rice, and pepper. In a large bowl, combine the pumpkin puree, marjoram, and thyme vegetables and rice and eggs.

In a 5-qt. slow cooker, layer one third of the sauce, half of the TVP and one third of the cabbage. Repeat layers; top with remaining sauce and cabbage. Pour over water

Cook, covered, on low until cabbage is tender, 6-8 hours.