Disco Underworld #9

disco under w o rld

issue #9 july 2009

the Gold Edition is here

Limited edition: Only 1000 copies world-wide.

u The best photos and

articles from the past issues of disco underworld.

100 pages of advertising free disco underworld goodness.

FABULOUS CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA: Published and delivered world-wide in time for Christmas 2009.

ORDER YOUR COPY off our blog with a credit card by clicking here.

u Each copy is personally signed, addressed and numbered.

u Copies have already gone

to the US, Sweden, the UK, Denmark, South Korea and New Zealand.

PLUS: Once all 1000 copies have been sold Online INsight Limited will set up a KIVA community, pledging 10% of the profits to help entrepreneurs in developing countries. Learn more about KIVA, one of the things the world should know more about, on page 37.

Prices are in NZ$ and include p&p (economy mail) and GST (where applicable).

Delivery within NZ: $40 NZ Delivery to Australia: $46.50 NZ Delivery World-wide: $53 NZ





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issue #9 features 6

direct address

18 reader submission: my town 33 things the world should know more about 46 mike’s space: americamas 68 last issue’s favourite

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39

8

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direct address

Next issue’s theme, is “Rhythm and Noise.” Drop me a line if you have anything to contribute: [email protected]

disco underworld, july 2009

Well the time has finally come when I can launch The Gold Edition, disco underworld’s very first print issue, to you all! It is very exciting and very scary at the same time, because it is going to be a true test of whether people value the concepts of life, creativity and sharing behind disco underworld! If you do, please buy a copy to show your support. There will only be 1000 printed, and they are all a bit special, numbered by hand and personalised to the lucky person receiving the copy. It will also be free of advertising, ensuring that you will get uninterrupted photo spreads and articles about all the best people I have interviewed over this last year! Also with giving back in mind, I have chosen to establish a KIVA

fund with 10% of the profits, once the 1000 copies have sold. KIVA seemed like the perfect choice for disco underworld, as their values are what disco also stands for: life, creativity, sharing and making the world a more positive place! You can read more about KIVA on page 37.

Cover image by Brigitte Bouquet. Read her story on page 8.

disco under w o rld

issue #9 july 2009

This issue’s theme is “Things the world should know more about.” Thank you to all of you who shared your ideas, I hope you all learn something new and exciting. Next issue we will be looking at “Rhythm and Noise,” and how music is incorporated into our lives.

disco underworld is published by Online INsight Limited © copyright 2009. By reading and interacting with our magazine and website, you agree to the terms laid out under the “terms of use” on the site www.discounderworld.com Editor: Stacey Childs [email protected] Contributors: Dillie Baria, Mike Woodruff, Kristina.

Remember to join our facebook group for sneak peeks of each issue too,

Coming up in the next few pages:

Have a good one! Stacey

Brigitte Bouquet Reader Submission: My Town

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Brigitte

Bouquet



B

www.discounderworld.com. brigitte bouquet. page

rigitte Bouquet was born in Amsterdam, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. About 17 years ago she began playing with ceramics in a friend’s studio, painting the plates and platters she made.

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Before she knew it, friends and friends of friends were ordering her work. Only two years later, she had shops and galleries selling her creations, which she fired in two different kilns in a big studio in Amsterdam. In 2008 she brought out a new range of handcrafted, mismatched, but charming ceramic plates, she calls “wobbly plates”. Wobbly Plates were an instant hit. Brigitte now works roughly half a week on her wobbly plates and half a week on her huge ceramic sculptures, which she began creating about eight years ago.



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She says of the years leading up to the creation of her first sculpture: “I was doing something I liked and was happy every day... but I kept having all these dreams in my head about big ceramic sculptures...”

Grassy Patch in Zichen-Zussen-Bolder This Page: Detail of the sculpture.

Brigitte says she is fascinated by patterns in nature, on a leaf, in sand, on a stonewall. The texture of a tree, the ripples of water; most of her works start in nature. She always carries a small camera with her, and “from that point on I let my imagination go... blow something up or give it a weird twist...” Her goal is to make beautiful things, and she loves making sculptures that are hard to believe are made of clay.

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The sculptures are created on a frame of thin wood. They each take about three to four months to create and Brigitte works on several pieces at the same time. She makes a rough sketch of her ideas and then starts working. She says that more often than not during the process, things change. The works each weigh between 80 and 90 kilograms or 175 and 200 pounds, and Brigitte says that moving them is



www.discounderworld.com. brigitte bouquet. page

always nerve-racking. “They are ridiculously heavy! To get them from my home to the gallery, the problem is more how to carry them... The frame is made of thin wood and with the green one the grass is ‘growing’ everywhere… all over the frame... tarahhh!” The effort is worth it though. The pieces are wonderful examples of creativity and dedication, and a testament to Brigitte’s vision and personality.

“They are ridiculously heavy! To get them from my home to the gallery, the problem is more how to carry them...”

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“What do I think the world should know more about? The incredibly diverse nature of clay with its limitless possibilities. When I tell people that I am a ceramist, most people always think right away ‘ahhhhhhh a potter!’ but clay and ceramics can mean so much more...” Find Brigitte on the net: http://web.me.com/bbceramics www.atelierbb.etsy.com

If you would like to vote for Brigitte, enter your email here and hit vote. Your vote will count once your email has been verified. Only one vote will count per email and person.

Detail of Watching Waves.



n w o T y M : n o i s is m b u S Reader



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“We went to see my husband’s brother and his girlfriend, who bought a house just before Christmas. When I was there last time they hadn’t moved in, but now the house is a home. They’ve done a lot of work painting, sanding, gardening and more - and there’s still lots to do. But the house is beautiful, and very welcoming.” Kristina, Sweden. www.greenwiggle.com/blog

Coming up in the next few pages: Jessica Stewart things the world should know more about

Send pictures or movies of your town to [email protected]





www.discounderworld.com. jessica stewart. page

jessica stewart

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J

essica is an art historian originally from Massachusetts, who moved to Rome in 2005. During the day she works for an organization that promotes cultural walking tours around Rome, and during her spare time she writes, photographs and blogs about her life in Rome. Reading through Jessica’s blog turned me a very deep shade of green. I was convinced that she had stolen my life, but rather than turn away in disgust at stolen identities, I decided to delve deeper.

“I started the blog in September 2008 as a way to photograph more and to my surprise its also made me become more engaged with the city. I really wanted to portray Rome in a different way, one that is more true to my sense of being here and living here.”



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Jessica regards moving to Rome as one of the best decisions she’s ever made. “I think if I hadn’t I would have always wondered ‘what if’ and to be honest I can't even imagine how different my life would be if I was still in the US.” Her blog records her visits to local events like gallery openings and fashion shows, and shows her rubbing shoulders with talented creative people. She says she finds out about these events on Facebook. “In the past six months its increasingly become a way that people are promoting events here. So if you are coming to town and want to know interesting things going on that locals would go to, try searching their events’ calendar.”



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Jessica thinks one of the things the world should know more about is other places. “I think everyone in the world should spend at least a few months living in a different place, as I think it really makes you more empathetic as a person.” She explains: “To be able to understand what it feels like to be in a language and culture that isn't your own makes you more tolerant as a person. It also makes you realize that the common threads of humanity carry through no matter where you are. No matter how different a person or a place might seem, you'll be surprised at the little things that are still the same. If everyone had more of this understanding, the world might be a better place.” She also would like the world to know that it is ok to take risks. She says that there were some people that thought she was crazy for packing up and leaving the States for Rome. “I followed my heart and did it, so that even if it didn't work out, I would always know that I had tried.”



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She says it is difficult to pinpoint the biggest differences between life in the States and life in Rome without sounding like she is complaining or preaching. “I’ll just say that the biggest differences are the cultural attitudes that you are born with. These are things that are hard to change and can be hard to understand for others not from your culture. There are a lot of things I’ve found out about myself and my world view that were directly shaped by growing up in the US. A lot of these are things that I treasure, while some are things I’m glad I got to see another perspective on.” Jessica says that the slight language barriers and a thousand other tiny things constantly remind her that she is not home, but that just being in Rome makes up for it. The culture, beauty, people and lifestyle all play their part in her ongoing obsession, and in onlookers envy, of her life in Rome.

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Visit romephotoblog.blogspot.com to see more of Jessica’s photos. If you would like to vote for Jessica, enter your email here and hit vote. Your vote will count once your email has been verified. Only one vote will count per email and person.



Things the World Should Know More About



www.discounderworld.com. things the world should know more about. page

Agneiszka Parr thought the world should know more about Henry Darger. Here’s what she sent in:

P

lain and simple.

We live in a world where we are overcome by media, and generally only the most shocking examples of human life are reported on. Well. I thought. How about if I asked my audience what things in their lives/towns/worlds they think the world should know more about? Here are what some of them shared:

“In 1973, at a Catholic poor house in Chicago, an 81-yearold retired janitor quietly died. His name was Henry Darger. Just months earlier, he had moved from the rented room where he had lived for over 40 years. When his landlords cleaned out the cluttered room, they discovered paintings: hundreds of brilliant watercolours, some over 10 feet long. The images were disturbing and mysteriously beautiful: little girls frolicking under stormy skies, little girls fighting soldiers, little girls being rescued by fantastic winged creatures.

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The landlords soon found the other half of Darger’s life work, perhaps the longest novel ever written. The more than 15,000 page single-spaced, In the Realms of the Unreal, is an epic story of the virtuous Vivian girls and their religious war against the evil Glandelinian army. For most of his life, Henry Darger, a recluse whom others called “Crazy,” had lived in this rich fantasy world. It was a world he had kept to himself. www.henrydarger.info There is a movie out on DVD, google image search spits out loads of his art, and Wikipedia has an entry too. Enjoy!” Ag mouseonaleash.blogspot.com



Neil Buddle thought the world should know more about religion, history and the economy. He explains: “What the world should know more about? 1. Religion - Whether you are spiritual or not, you should know about the world’s religions, their similarities and their differences (e.g. Islam, Christianity and Judaism have around 34 prophets in common between all three religions - Mmm, so why do they fight so?) Religion has shaped our national boundaries, our social structures, our moral beliefs and our grasp of science. Greater understanding will really help with religious tolerance and understanding in the future. 2. History - No-one seems to know anything about history anymore so we are reinventing the wheel and the world, in the image of our own ignorance.

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3. Economy - Our economic model is set up to ‘boom and bust’ so there should be no surprise when it does just that. That is the secret to making a lot of money in business (one man’s ruin is another’s profit), not the secret to maintaining a stable and consistent economy. Human beings have been around for two million years and the first unit of currency was not developed until approx 5000 years ago in what is now modern Iran/Turkey/Iraq. The first metal coins did not arrive until approx 650 BC in China and bank notes were not printed in Europe until the 17th century. How did we survive before that? Ultimately, these things all tie in to history. History is not just the study of ‘what happened’ in the past, it is the study of ‘why is it happening’ in the present and the ‘what will happen’ in the future. Neil.” Coming up in the next few pages: Mark Horvath Mike’s Space: Americamas

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Both Neil and Ag’s ideas tie into Steve’s email below, and embody the spirit behind disco underworld: “Stacey, Plain and simple, the world would be a better place for us all if we ALL knew more about each other. On a local level as well as a national/religious/cultural level. Knowledge is not just power, it is understanding. Steve.” And me? Despite the obvious that I think that the world should know more about each other on a positive human level, I think that the world should know more about croissant aux amandes (croissants with an almond butter cream on and in them), red wine (particularly red desert wine) and chocolate fudge brownies (together, use the wine to wash down the brownie).

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www.discounderworld.com. things www.discounderworld.com. the world should know more twitt about. twitt. page page

But on a serious and a makethe-world-a-more-positive-place note, I think the world should know more about KIVA. KIVA is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, which connects individuals like you and me to entrepreneurs in the developing world, allowing us to provide a loan from as little as $25 US for them to use to start their own small business. The loan is eventually paid back in full, and the entrepreneur blogs about their progress as they establish their business. The loan money is basically “recycled”, and can be taken out again, or put back into the wash for another entrepreneur from another country, to use to start a business of their own. Kiva really is helping the world become a better place for thousands of people and their families and communities in developing countries like Afghanistan, Peru, Tajikistan and Ghana.

Once all 1000 editions of The Gold Edition are sold, we will be pledging 10% of the profits to KIVA.

We will also track our pledge every issue, filling you in on how the small businesses we have helped are going. Once the loans are re-payed we will re-donate the money back into the Kiva community.

Please buy a copy of The Gold Edition to show your support for disco underworld and KIVA. If The Gold Edition isn’t your bag, please consider pledging some money to Kiva, in your own name: www.kiva.org.

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www.discounderworld.com. mark horvath. page

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Mark Horvath

Mark Horvath thinks the world should know more about the homeless people in America.



“Being homeless in Hollywood. That was never my dream”

M

ark moved to LA in 1987 to seek fame and fortune as a musician. He found a little success playing his drums, but decided to shift his focus onto the television industry. By 1994 he had a promising career in TV and a Mercedes Benz.



www.discounderworld.com. mark horvath. page

“Being homeless in Hollywood. That was never my dream.” But it became a reality after Mark ended up living in a park in Hollywood, able to fit everything he owned (two shirts, a pair of jeans and a kitchen knife), into a backpack. A severe addiction to drugs landed him in the park, where he remembers sitting all day, watching people walking their dogs, playing with their kids and “longing to have a life again.”

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“I lost my family, I lost everything that was dear to me. I lost my possessions.” He hit rock bottom, and dreamed of turning the knife he had with him for survival, on himself. And he was not alone. Every night in LA, over 90,000 people live on the streets, over 3.5 million nation-wide. The average age of the homeless in the USA is just nine years of age.



“Homelessness can happen to anyone.” Mark’s own story shows that “homelessness can happen to anyone.” More jobs have been lost in America in the last 12 months than any other period in record keeping history, according to data from the Labor Department. Experts only predict that unemployment will get worse. On the other hand, Mark’s story also shows that there is hope for each and every person living on the streets. For Mark, God played a big part in his survival. 15 years ago The Dream Centre, the church he credits with his survival and revival helped him clean up and find employment. He used his television producing skills from his previous life to produce a weekly show about the events and news from the centre. That job finished up eight years ago, and since Mark has once again found himself unemployed with no income. But he is doing something...



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Mark has launched a website www.invisiblepeople.tv, where he goes onto the streets and meets homeless people. His goal is to make homeless people visible to everyone else. “It’s not that people are bad, but if we make eye contact, or engage in conversation, we have to admit they exist.” The interviews are uncut and unedited and therefore provide direct insights into the characters and day-to-day lives of the people who live on the streets.



Like Janine who works as a gardener, but doesn’t earn enough to be able to hold down an apartment. She lives in one of the temporary tent cities around Sacramento. Or Steve, who is a 58-year-old man who moved to Hollywood to sell a screenplay. He now sells cans and bottles, pushes a shopping cart, eats entirely out of dumpsters, and sleeps in alleyways. He says “I sleep across the street in that hideous-looking alley. But it’s not so bad because the people there are so nice.”

Click to watch Steve’s interview. The link will take you to an outside page (www.vimeo.com) where you can watch all Mark’s videos.

www.discounderworld.com. mark horvath. page

“I have the worst disease in the world: I am a romantic.” Steve claims he ended up on the streets because “I have the worst disease in the world: I am a romantic.” The stories and the lives portrayed on invisiblepeople.tv are intriguing and eye-opening. It is so easy to pass over and pass off the homeless, so much easier than hearing their stories. Through this website Mark gives them a voice, and us an opportunity to learn and connect with those most of us would otherwise prefer to ignore and forget. “Everyone on the streets has their own story, some made bad decisions, others were victims, but none of them deserve what they have been left with, and it is a reflection of our own society that we just leave them there.”

Visit http://invisiblepeople.tv/blog to learn more about Mark and the people he interviews.

If you would like to vote for Mark, enter your email here and hit vote. Your vote will count once your email has been verified. Only one vote will count per email and person.

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www.discounderworld.com. mike’s space. page

Mike Woodruff lives in Los Angeles. When not writing, he enjoys playing basketball and eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. You can find him on the internet at www.mutinouswombats.blogspot.com

Read last month’s Mike’s Space here.

I

Americamas

words and images by Mike Woodruff

t’s happening this month. We Americans are celebrating our Independence Day. The 4th of July. Americamas. Whatever you want to call it. If you’re not American, the only time this day probably resonated with you was when President Bill Pullman declared it World Independence Day from aliens. That was right before he jumped in a jet fighter alongside Randy Quaid, Jeff Goldblum, and Will Smith and proceeded to blow hostile extraterrestrials out of the sky.

Because we Americans like to celebrate our freedom from tyranny in the loudest way possible, we buy fireworks. All around the country, people are crossing state lines and browsing barns full of firecrackers and bottle rockets and cherry bombs. If they’re lucky and they ask the right questions to the right people, they might even be led around to the parking lot in the back, where an unmarked van awaits with all the “premium” items available for sale. This is our holiday; the apex of the American summer, a day full of swimming pools, hamburgers, macaroni and cheese, and the celebration of the birth of our nation with fireworks that explode so violently the shock waves thump off your chest.

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For one night, you can drive unhindered down the Los Angeles freeways, rockets glaring red all around the hills. The harsh smell of spent gunpowder rests in your nostrils. Smoke fills the air. It’s a night full of celebration and revelry, temporarily pausing the realities of living in a semi-arid climate where a single spark from a match can start a thousand-acre wildfire in favour of practicing something we do very well: Blowing shit up. And Americans are good at this. The second amendment (the right to bear arms, i.e. own guns) ensures our solemn duty to never forget how to properly use gunpowder. Even if that little law were not in place, we’d find a way to get it done. Or “Git’r’dun!”, if we’re in the South.



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You’d think over a century without a war on our soil might weed that lock, stock and two smoking barrel impulse out of us, but you’d be wrong in that regard, too. For example, here in Southern California, enthusiasts gather every year to commemorate the American Civil War Battle of Gettysburg. Just think about that for a second. People living in Los Angeles dress up in grey costumes made from itchy wool and shoot pop caps at other Angelenos wearing itchy blue costumes, re-enacting a battle that took place in Pennsylvania, over 3,000 miles away, nearly 150 years ago. Does anyone else in the world do anything remotely like this? Probably not.

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“Politics deflated the American cool balloon.” Beyond the bombs bursting in air, the 4th of July is still one of our most memorable holidays. Just a few years ago, being an American in a foreign country was not enjoyable. Politics deflated the American cool balloon. Everyone temporarily forgot all our unique cultural contributions to the world because it was suddenly cool to draw President Bush with a chimpanzee face. Now we have Obama though, and once again, America is cool. They forget that Americans were always cool.



Our music is cool. We boast more famous dead musicians than any other country. Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, and now, Michael Jackson. It’s true that the King of Pop was a global icon, but he was uniquely American. His phenomenon and rising star could not have originated anywhere else. Our food is cool. Yes, hamburgers and hot dogs are the stereotypical American cuisine, but we bring more to the table than just those inventions. Orange Chicken wasn’t made in China. It was first made here. Hawaiians took the most patriotic meat of them all, SPAM, and combined it with seaweed, rice and brown sugar to make musubi. If you’ve never tasted it, SPAM musubi is quite possibly the tastiest iteration of canned meat known to man. Fish tacos? Not Mexican. That’s us, too. While the standard argument against the uniqueness of American food is that all our meals are just jerry-rigged from other cultures might hold some water, it misses the point.



America as a melting pot makes perfect sense here, because that IS our unique contribution to the world. We are a potluck society, a crazy mishmash of ideas and backgrounds that adds flavour to previously separate tastes. And at the risk of losing some of the lustre of that coolness, I’ll stop there. I’m intensely proud of my country, but I can only do so much gushing before it turns to gloating. I don’t have any intention of making America seem cooler than anywhere else. New Zealand is cool, too. Without you New Zealand, the world wouldn’t have Middle Earth. One last note though, while fantasy lands are topical: America also gave the world Disneyland, which I’ve been to twice in the past month. Where would the world be without the Happiest Place on Earth? More importantly, where would it be without the nightly fireworks show over Snow White’s castle? Yes, there are fireworks every single night in Anaheim. Is this really any surprise? It shouldn’t be.

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lisa toboz

article by Dillie Baria





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L

isa’s parents instilled in her two distinctive characteristics: 1) 2)

To be an adventurous traveller. To be an adventurous eater.

Both traits intertwine throughout her life, feeding each other through experience and discovery. Her Italian/Hungarian background and geographical location, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, further compound her curiosities. Pittsburgh is a town settled by immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Lisa is excited for the world to see a bit of what Pittsburgh is about when the G20 summit comes to town in September. “Pittsburgh is alive with history. A city that has emerged from a dying industrial past bruised, but revitalized through a committed ‘green’ movement, and active technical, health care, and educational industries.”





“My friend Roya calls it ‘food pornography’ because it is fantasizing about and longing for the dish on the page, while eating something comforting and familiar.”

www.discounderworld.com. lisa toboz. page

The daughter of a Hungarian steelworker and an Italian mother, Lisa currently works as a freelance writer and photographer, and is also a records evaluator at an arts college. Having grown up a budding feminist in a single parent home, she decided she would never cook, but all this changed when she was in college. “I needed an outlet from my studies, and reading about food comforted me. Cooking allowed me to be lost completely in a moment, much like writing.” She claims mussels made her a more adventurous eater. Once she would swallow them whole in fear of having to bite into them, and she now cannot imagine eating them without dipping them in plain garlic butter first. One of Lisa’s favourite food past-times is eating comfort food while reading cookbooks with complex recipes, making her tongue tingle with flavour. “My friend Roya calls it ‘food pornography’ because it is fantasizing about and longing for the dish on the page, while eating something comforting and familiar.”

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“My parents divorced when I was very young, so my food memories don't involve sitting around the dinner table with the whole family. I do remember visiting my Hungarian grandmother and eating her lightly breaded chicken cutlets dusted with paprika.” Her grandfather was also a keen cook and would roast chickens on a spit in the courtyard of their Pittsburgh home. The recipe for the special sauce her grandfather would serve the chicken with, went with him to his grave. She names egg noodles with butter and black pepper as “simply the best comfort food ever. My mother would make this often when we were kids, when she was too tired to cook after working all day.” These noodles are what she, her mother and her sister survived on for weeks on end in difficult times. Through these times they were also supplied with other staple foods from the US Government, an experience which meant that the marking of time was recorded in the foods they had in the cupboard.



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“Muddy-looking, like something stuck to the bottom of your shoe. But smothered over yellow potato bread offsets the ugliness of it.”



www.discounderworld.com. lisa toboz. page

“The beginning of the month marked food stamp time, so we could get good lunch meat, like cappicola, fresh mozzarella cheese, or bratwurst for sauerkraut. As the month went on, we were left with Kraft slices and pickles between regular white bread.” Lisa wonders why there aren’t cookbooks produced about comfort food such as “city chicken”, a blend of veal and chicken, breaded lightly and pan-fried, or “sloppy joes” sautéed in a creamy sauce of mushroom soup. She adds the lack of coverage could possibly be because of the visual appeal of the food, “muddy-looking, like something stuck to the bottom of your shoe. But smothered over yellow potato bread offsets the ugliness of it.” Coming up in the next few pages: grandma’s recipe for toltott kaposzta last issue’s favourite

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www.discounderworld.com. lisa toboz. page

In the days before discovering her love of cooking, Muttar Paneer (an Indian meal made of peas and cubes of tofu-like cheese) was Lisa’s favourite take-out meal from the Indian restaurant she worked at while a sophomore at college. “I used to eat this dish for many-a-dinner (sometimes three or four days in a row). I love the sweetness and slight bite to the peas with the chewy paneer following right after.” Lisa uses her eclectic palate to her advantage when travelling, saying she’s always looking for a dish that defines a country, city, or even a person. After college, she volunteered around Eastern Europe for six months, visiting Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia. Slovenia is where she tasted her favourite sandwich, a simple delicacy called Prekmurje ham sandwich. The owner of the family farm Lisa stayed at made her a lunch of “freshly baked bread, ham straight from the pigs on the farm, and a poppy seed gibanica, which is a seven-layer strudel popular in that region.”

Lisa credits her husband Jeff’s fried chicken with reminding her why she married him in the first place. “I don’t know the exact recipe and if I did I wouldn’t tell anyone, but it’s amazing.” Together Lisa and Jeff love nothing more than just getting in the car and escaping down the hidden highways of the US, finding small towns, unremarkable shops and great food.

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www.discounderworld.com. lisa toboz. page

Cabbage:

Grandma’s Recipe for Toltott Kaposzta “Toltott Kaposzta, or stuffed cabbage, is typically a northern Hungarian dish served at Christmas, which also marks the time of the first pig slaughter. My family is from Southern Hungary, but this dish must have been one of comfort for them when they immigrated to the States. I was surprised to see the curious addition of tomato soup for the sauce instead of tomato paste, a sign of my grandmother's adaptability to 1950s American cooking. The meat mixture can also be used to make stuffed peppers. Every time I eat this dish, in my mind’s eye I am sitting in her kitchen, so tiny that my father

and his siblings had to eat dinner in shifts. The kitchen hardly changed decor in over 50 years, and neither has this recipe. Ingredients: * 1 large head of cabbage * 1 lb. and ¼ (600 grams) of ground beef * 1 egg * ½ large onion, chopped * 2 tsps. paprika * 1 cup of rice * 28 oz (800 gram) can of tomato sauce * 1 can tomato soup * Butter * Salt and pepper

Place the cabbage core-side down in a pot of hot water. As you boil the cabbage, peel the leaves away when they reach the desired tenderness. Set them aside for rolling. When you get to the very end of the cabbage, save the small pieces for the meat mixture. Cabbage filling: Cook the rice according to the directions on the pack. Sauté the onion in the butter. Add the ground beef and brown with the onions. Once they have finished cooking, mix the meat and onions with the egg, salt, pepper, and paprika. Add the rice and extra cabbage pieces to the meat mixture. Take the meat filling and roll in the cabbage leaves. The smaller the rolls, the better. Cabbage rolls: Layer the cabbage rolls, one on top of another in a large dutch oven or any large pot. Pour the tomato sauce and soup over the top and simmer for four to five hours.”

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