Gawumpkies

Or however you spell them...my Gram makes them the best.
Being on the other side of the country from her for all my life, it'd be a treat to have them when I did. Luckily, my Dad knows how make them, and that's how I learned.

Gawumpkies

1 Medium Cabbage
1 lb Ground Pork
1 lb Ground Beef
2 cups of rice (uncooked)
Salt
Pepper
1 large can of Stewed Tomatoes

Cook up the rice as instructed.

Peel away the outer leaves of the cabbage, and then cut out the stem. Fill up with some water, cover, and put into a microwaveable bowl - microwave for 5-8 minutes. Carefully peel leaves off of the cabbage. Have a plate and paring knife nearby. The middle vein of the cabbage leaf will be prominent, cut this back with the paring knife. Put leaf on plate and repeat until you have a pile of leaves to work with. (I find when the leaves get annoyingly small or there's too much to cut off the leaf that you won't have one left, use these to line the base of the crock pot - it will prevent burning of the gawumpki)


Combine pork, beef, rice, salt and pepper in a large bowl. You can start by mixing with a fork, and then mix around with your hands to make sure that everything is mixed in evenly.

Take a cabbage leaf into your hand. At the base of leaf, place a large spoonful of the meat/rice mixture. Fold up the sides of the cabbage leaf and then curl the leaf in your hand until it is a sealed roll. Place it in the crock pot.



Continue until meat or cabbage is used up or the crock pot is full. Whichever comes first.


Take the can of stewed tomatoes and pour over the pot of gawumpkies.


Cook in crock pot on high for 4 hours, low for a only an hour/hour and a half more if you are paranoid. Any more and you'll burn them for sure.

Dad swears by short or medium grain white rice. I don't tend to have this in the house, so today I experimented by using brown rice. Now I think the importance of the white rice is the starch, which my brown rice lacked, so my gawumpkies were a little more crumbly than usual. I think I picked up the wrong kind of tomato can, too (I picked up crushed) - but in the end they turned out pretty darn tasty. And it doesn't hurt to know that these things are always better the second day!

Some of my cousins eat them with ketchup, and I think that ruins it...I'm a salt and pepper kind of girl. Yum yum yum!