During our last trip to the Serramonte Farmers' Market, Hungry Bear and I picked up the freshest produce we could find for a light and simple sauté. The corn looked fantastic and the cherry tomatoes were super sweet. Hungry Bear told me that she had never cooked with okra, which surprised me, so that was a must get. The end result of our market bounty was this veggie sauté.

Which brings me to my childhood okra story... one summer while I was in elementary school my dad decided to do some gardening. At that point, my family had been in the States for only 5-6 years and we were still living in an apartment complex in Allentown, PA. So, my dad rented a tiny plot at a community garden. The only things I clearly remember him planting were okra and tomatoes, but I'm sure there were Vietnamese vegetables that we couldn't get at the local Acme supermarket.

Stuffed cabbage soup is not the most photogenic dish I've made recently. While it lacks the prettiness or sophistication of other meals, it makes up for it in flavor and comfort. I love stuffed cabbage, but it takes too long to make on a workday. So I took all the ingredients of stuffed cabbage and transformed it into an easy to make soup.

I basically made a cabbage soup with ground beef and served it over rice. The steamed rice is made separately and not cooked in the soup. A typical Vietnamese family-style meal usually consists of bowls of rice, a meat or fish dish, stir-fried vegetables and a bowl of soup (canh). The soup is ladled over the rice. Two examples of canh are bitter melon soup and sour shrimp soup.

Naturally, I applied this canh concept to my stuffed cabbage soup and had the rice on the side. The soup is a cinch to prepare and can be ready in thirty minutes. I wanted to use ground turkey in the soup, but my butcher ran out early, so I used ground sirloin instead. To allow the cabbage to shine, I only put a small can of diced tomatoes in the recipe. Remember, I have a low tart tolerance and I love cabbage.