Geez, I haven’t made cabbage rolls in a while now. We’re having Tuffy’s side of the family over for Easter. I’ve ordered a leg of lamb from The Village Butcher. He’s going to debone it for me. I’ll roast the lamb on the bbq and make stock from the bone and use the stock to make a red wine and rosemary sauce for the lamb.
I live in farm country and when we moved here from The Big Smoke there were butchers everywhere and abattoirs everywhere. You could get the best of meats at decent prices. Loblaws and the death of the family farm pretty much killed off that whole industry. After 25 years without a butcher Alliston had one guy man up and try his luck a few months ago. He is luckily located sort of behind a bank where you can stop in and arrange an extra mortgage before buying your meat. He isn’t organic or anything like that, just very expensive.
The whole meat thing has changed in farm country. You used to be able to raise a flock of chickens and take them in banana boxes or borrowed cages to a local guy who would kill, pluck, and dress them and give you back a frozen chicken all for $1. There were several smokehouses around. I once took a 7 pound rainbow trout to a local butcher for smoking. The guy charged me $2 and he produced a smoked trout that tasted like the best smoked salmon money could buy. Everyone with a barn had a couple of pigs they were fattening on table scraps and vegetable leftovers and there was always a local trucker or two who would happily haul 1 or 2 pigs to the local butcher / abattoir. Folks would raise a steer and sell half on the hoof to a neighbor then ship the single steer to the butcher who would look after killing, cutting and freezing. That is all gone now. I suppose an independent butcher can survive in Toronto with its huge population but the local butcher shop is a rare thing in small towns now. The chain grocery stores seem to prefer promoting boxed frozen added value products like meat balls and breaded chicken over fresh plain old meat. I suppose this is a necessary transition though if we are ever to graduate to subsisting on soylent green.
27th Street 
I love Golubtsi. I make a mushroom filling one sometimes, and meat filled ones for special holidays. Cabbage is wonderful.
Geez, I haven’t made cabbage rolls in a while now. We’re having Tuffy’s side of the family over for Easter. I’ve ordered a leg of lamb from The Village Butcher. He’s going to debone it for me. I’ll roast the lamb on the bbq and make stock from the bone and use the stock to make a red wine and rosemary sauce for the lamb.
I live in farm country and when we moved here from The Big Smoke there were butchers everywhere and abattoirs everywhere. You could get the best of meats at decent prices. Loblaws and the death of the family farm pretty much killed off that whole industry. After 25 years without a butcher Alliston had one guy man up and try his luck a few months ago. He is luckily located sort of behind a bank where you can stop in and arrange an extra mortgage before buying your meat. He isn’t organic or anything like that, just very expensive.
The whole meat thing has changed in farm country. You used to be able to raise a flock of chickens and take them in banana boxes or borrowed cages to a local guy who would kill, pluck, and dress them and give you back a frozen chicken all for $1. There were several smokehouses around. I once took a 7 pound rainbow trout to a local butcher for smoking. The guy charged me $2 and he produced a smoked trout that tasted like the best smoked salmon money could buy. Everyone with a barn had a couple of pigs they were fattening on table scraps and vegetable leftovers and there was always a local trucker or two who would happily haul 1 or 2 pigs to the local butcher / abattoir. Folks would raise a steer and sell half on the hoof to a neighbor then ship the single steer to the butcher who would look after killing, cutting and freezing. That is all gone now. I suppose an independent butcher can survive in Toronto with its huge population but the local butcher shop is a rare thing in small towns now. The chain grocery stores seem to prefer promoting boxed frozen added value products like meat balls and breaded chicken over fresh plain old meat. I suppose this is a necessary transition though if we are ever to graduate to subsisting on soylent green.
George W Bush once said:
“You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on. ”
but then he also said:
“I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well. ”
Make cabbage rolls and all will be well.