Cabbage

DEAR SOS: I am a former Southern California resident now living in Northern California. I really miss Clearman's Northwoods Inn restaurants. I know quite a few years back you published the recipe for their red cabbage salad. JUDITH CHENEY Via e-mail DEAR JUDITH: We first ran this recipe, developed by the Times Test Kitchen, in 1990. It's based on the salad from the Clearman's restaurant chain. Red Cabbage Salad Active Work Time and Total Preparation Time: 15 minutes, plus 2 hours standing 1/2 head red cabbage, cored 1/2 cup oil 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar 3 tablespoons sugar 2 teaspoons salt, or more to taste 1 teaspoon seasoned salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1/4 teaspoon onion powder Shred the cabbage so it is irregular, with some fine and some coarse shreds, and place in a large nonaluminum bowl.

In early December, Liu Zhangning was tending her cabbage patch when she saw a tall yellow construction crane in the distance. At night, the work lights made it seem like day. Fifteen days later, a 30-story hotel towered over her village on the outskirts of the city like a glass and steel obelisk. "I couldn't really believe it," Liu said. "They built that thing in under a month. " A time-lapse video of the project in Changsha, which shows the prefabricated building being assembled on site, has racked up more than 5 million views on YouTube and left Western architects speechless.

We live in a contradictory age, when city slickers pay a fortune to become weekend buckaroos herding cattle in the Wyoming outback, yet disdain red meat at the dinner table in favor of some pale bottom-trash fish with a sprig of parsley in its mouth. I'm sorry, Hopalong, but this won't do. If you seek the authentic western experience you had better be prepared to sink your canines into a serious chunk of bovine.

In celebration of Chinese New Year, the Hammer Museum    published Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold 's picks for the best regional Chinese food in Los Angeles. It's your map to the San Gabriel Valley by regional cuisine. Beijing style: Beijing Pie House , 846 E. Garvey Ave., Monterey Park. Try the lamb pie and pan-fried meat cake. Chengdu style: Lucky Noodle King , 534 E. Valley Blvd., #10, San Gabriel, (626) 573-5668, www.luckynoodleking.com.

British researchers have developed what they say is a "cure" for Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease. And all you have to do is starve yourself for eight weeks. Roy Taylor, head of the magnetic resonance imaging unit at Newcastle University in Britain, and his colleagues studied 11 patients who had developed diabetes later in life and who had had it for several years. The patients averaged 220 pounds at the beginning of the study. Each was put on a 600-calorie-per-day diet that included a special diet drink and non-starchy vegetables, such as broccoli, asparagus and cabbage.

"You cannot go away without eating," protested Rosalind Sein as I rose to depart. "It's Burmese tradition to always feed friends who come to your home." Although Sein was busy packing for a trip to Myanmar, she had nevertheless arranged lunch. Her daughter Evelyn had made a fish casserole. Sein herself had prepared a green bean salad with the toasty flavors of roasted peanut powder and sesame seeds. This she served with steamed rice and a soup that contained dried mushrooms brought from Myanmar.

Companion planting, as its name indicates, is a friendly, old-time garden practice. It means growing two or more different kinds of plants close together with the hope that some mutual benefits will result. Early settlers in America found Indians planting corn and pumpkins close together. In small, space-limited gardens, companion planting offers efficiency.

My sister became a terrific cook long before I even learned to turn on an oven. True, she made some batches of grainy fudge in the kitchen of our Cleveland home when we were kids, but that didn't deter her from continually trying new recipes and then perfecting them to suit her taste. Bobbie married, and while raising a family, also owned and operated a delicatessen on Cleveland's west side for 25 years.