"Purple Cabbage" -- oil on canvas -- 24x24" -- Margie Guyot

Cabbages are so weird-looking when you cut them open! Don't these halves look like something from the depths of the ocean? I forgot why I bought this little cabbage originally, but was looking around for something to paint. This tablecloth seemed to go perfectly with the cabbage halves, echoing the deep alizarin crimson tones. The blue swirly-glass bowls I've painted several times. Those swirls are tough! Even getting the color right is a challenge. In the past I've tried mixing viridian with a bit of blue. This time I relied on an old tube of manganese blue. So old, I had to hold a lighted match on the cap to warm up the hardened paint in order to unscrew it.

We finally had about 1 1/2 days of sun here, so I was furiously painting in the patterns of sunlight and shadow as quickly as possible.

Waste not, want not: I brought the cabbage into the house this afternoon and used in the "Russian Cabbage Borscht" recipe from the original Moosewood Cookbook.