Cabbage

Football season has started and Ravens fans are putting on their purple hats and pulling out their pennants. This year, you can extend the purple passion to your table as well. We've pulled together a panoply of trendy purple vegetables, suitable for your next tailgating party or simply a family dinner. You can pick up purple broccoli, purple cauliflower, purple Peruvian potatoes, purple carrots, purple (maroon) cabbage and even purple asparagus. Ponder the possibilities. Steak and potatoes can take on a new hue. Carrots and hummus can be coordinated with team colors.

June Freeberg of Union, Ill., is seeking a recipe she says was called Spoonables or Noodables. She writes: "Every year my family goes to Lafayette, Ind., to attend the Feast of the Hunters' Moon. There is great food there. Every year I buy this dish. This year I purchased the recipe, and on the way home, somewhere, somehow it was lost. Please help me locate someone who has this recipe." Connie Vianco of West Lafayette, Ind., responded. She wrote, "I obtained this recipe from the Feast of the Hunters' Moon [in Lafayette, Ind.]

WALDOBORO, Maine -- Just one forkful and it all becomes clear why two art dealers from Seattle, who trace their meeting to a Bolivian witch doctor, gave up their business, moved to rural Maine and spent their life savings to buy an 82-year-old sauerkraut-making business. Or maybe not. But have another forkful of what may be the freshest, best-tasting kraut in the New World while Jacqueline Sawyer and David Swetnam tell you their story as they tend great white barrels of fermenting cabbage and a steady stream of customers.

On a recent frigid New England day, when the temperature registered 3 degrees, I was talking on the phone with a woman who, like me, grew up in Memphis, Tenn. We found ourselves bemoaning the freezing weather that prevails in Massachusetts during much of the winter and longing for the milder climate of our native South. My friend had a solution. She was headed to Florida for a respite. But my husband and I had to work and were stuck with the Arctic chill. After more than a decade in the Northeast, however, I feel experienced in dealing with its winters and have learned to look at the positive side of the season.

During the cold snowy days of winter, nothing is more satisfying than comfort food. Familiar, unpretentious fare, it consoles when the thermometer plunges and the landscape turns white. Roast chicken, pot roast with rich dark gravy, smothered pork chops, macaroni and cheese, potato gratins, chocolate chip cookies and apple pie are the types of dishes I long for and find myself preparing for my family and for company. In the winter, I often invite people for supper rather than for dinner -- the former conjuring up an image of a simple, satisfying meal and the latter denoting a more formal repast.

What's the definition of eternity? A ham and two people. I love that line from Joy of Cooking authors Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker. On more than one occasion, I've baked a glorious ham for entertaining a crowd, only to discover the next day that there was enough meat remaining on the bone to feed my husband and me for an entire week. Take, for example, the fall dinner party I held several days ago where a large glazed ham was the star attraction. Even after all the guests had helped themselves to seconds and some had even left with doggy bags, there was still a shocking amount of ham on the platter when I opened the fridge the following morning.

I ASSOCIATE November's cranky weather with the arrival of some of the great Maryland foods, our scrapple, sauerkraut, sour beef, buckwheat cakes and fried oysters. Once my grandmother Lily Rose and her sister, Great Aunt Cora, laid down their mops and scrubbing brushes in their annual battle with fall housecleaning, they moved on to the next pleasure. The dishes that issued from their warm and sunny Guilford Avenue kitchen for the next couple of months would make you a fan of these long nights and bone-chilling days.

Sara R. Knowles of St. Augustine, Fla., requested a recipe for cabbage soup "like the one we enjoyed at Big Boy restaurants in Ironwood, Mich." She added, "I love soup, and nothing I've found can come close to this soup. I'd appreciate help in getting that one or something close to it." Margaret S. Waring of Baltimore responded with tester Laura Reiley's choice. Cabbage Soup Makes 3 quarts, serves 8 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 1/4 teaspoon black pepper 2 celery stalks, chopped one 16-ounce can kidney beans, undrained 1/2 large head of cabbage, chopped one 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes, undrained 28 ounces water (use tomato can for measuring)

Nothing beats clomping out to the garden in a November drizzle to cut a fresh cabbage for homemade vegetable soup. It's only possible, of course, if the clomping, knife-wielding gardener planted cabbage for late-autumn harvest -- and vegetable transplants and seeds for cool weather vegetables were as scarce as hen's teeth until recently. But garden centers, which battle summer heat and drought along with the rest of us, now stock cool weather seedlings and seeds to give disappointed gardeners another shot at a decent harvest.

Imagine a centerpiece as useful as it is eye-catching. Philadelphia potter Marge Margulies takes the image of an unfolding flower as the inspiration for nesting bowls that can be used alone as serving dishes or nestled together to create an eye-catching display. The bowls are wheel-thrown and painted with colored glazes. All pieces are dishwasher- and microwave-safe. The eight-piece Red Cabbage Rose With Bowl and Platters sells for $574. The blue 10-piece Cabbage Rose With Platter is $664 and the eight-piece Mille Feuille is $210.