I made Golombkis!

Its true everyone, this arab-american girl made a polish feast....and it was GREAT! Originally I thought I was going to try this recipe but I just knew that I wasn't going to like the tomato soup based sauce so I called Eric's mom and she gave me her recipe. Her recipe uses tomato sauce instead of soup, which I thought would just make for a much more homemade taste rather than the processed taste of tomato soup. Also, I must say this was actually really really easy and affordable.

What you'll need:
1 lb ground beef
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 1/2 cup cooked brown rice
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup tomato sauce
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp basil, chopped
1 head cabbage (10 outer leaves)

1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions.
2. While rice is cooking remove about 10-15 of the large outer leaves from a head of cabbage and boil them for about 10 minutes, until they are soft.
3. Place chopped onions in a skillet and cook until tender. Add ground beef and cook until browned. Drain fat from pan and add garlic and a pinch of salt and pepper, cook for another minute. Add cooked rice to the beef mixture now, I also added about a tbsp of tomato sauce at this point just to give the meat some more flavor.
4. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare a baking dish by lining with tinfoil and spraying with cooking spray.
5. Now start making the cabbage rolls by taking each cabbage leaf and cutting out the thick vein in the middle, making a V-shape cut out in the bottom of the leaf. Place about 1/4 cup of the beef mixture onto the middle of the leaf. This part is a bit challenging because the leaves are very tender and tear easily. Just be patient and don't worry if the leaf doesn't wrap around the filling perfectly, it will all taste the same in the end as long as you get a good beef to cabbage ratio for each roll. Place the completed rolls into the greased baking dish.
6. Make the sauce by putting a cup of tomato sauce into a small bowl. Add the sugar, basil, a pinch of salt and pepper and about a tsp of water. Mix together to drizzle over the cabbage rolls in the dish. Cover the dish tightly with tin foil and bake for 40-50 minutes.

To my surprise Eric was thrilled with the way these turned out. I thought for sure there was no way mine were going to stand up to the polish families traditional meal...but apparently I can be quite versatile! Now what was also great about this is that you can take the same beef mixture and put it in green peppers to make some killer stuffed peppers. I personally took my leftover beef and put it on a taco shell, added some lettuce, cheese, and hot sauce and I had some tacos for lunch the next day. So overall I was really pleased with this and definitely recommend everyone tries it!