Creativity comes in many forms. My primary—and professional—medium is words. But food is a close second that brings me a lot of pleasure.

I haven’t had much time to cook while sheltering at home, mostly because I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home and my job is one whose demands have ramped up significantly in the pandemic. But occasionally I get a cooking urge when I actually have time to explore it.

Yesterday was one of those days. So I looked in the freezer, found some ground turkey that needed to be used, and went recipe hunting. The result: turkey meatballs seasoned with cardamom and orange, served over a bed of cabbage and brown rice, with grape tomatoes on the side.

I started with this recipe and played with the seasonings a bit, substituting a smaller quantity of mace for the nutmeg in the meatballs and adding turmeric and ancho peppers. I also added turmeric and ancho to the sauce, along with a lemon-garlic seasoning that gets a lot of use in my kitchen. I didn’t alter the cabbage at all, except to skip the salt and use a slightly citrusy pepper blend instead of plain pepper.

It was tasty, and the cabbage is an absolute keeper, especially mixed with rice as in this recipe.

Dessert was peach pie I made the night before, and the weather cooperated so we could eat outside. Heaven.