Grape leaves probably weren't the best thing to bring to our CSA farm party.  They take a long time to roll up!  I got my groove going, and would have made more but there were two factors at work here.  1) I planned on using some kale instead of grape leaves, and 2) My jar of grape leaves had a good share of leaves I chose not to use.  Some were too small, and some had holes in them.  Not tears, but holes.  I think I'll buy a different brand next time.  Over all, I ended up with about 40?  Back to the kale, I forgot about the deep tough rib that runs through the leaves, thus rendering them useless to stuff.  Well, I could stuff them, but they wouldn't be "party worthy".

If anyone who was there tried them, please let me know your thoughts.  Last night when I tried the ones that fell apart, I found them a bit bland.  To counter this, I covered them this morning with a drizzle of lemon-infused extra-virgin olive oil, and some fresh lemon juice.  I was going to try one after this, but I feared I didn't have enough!  I hope they weren't too lemony!!

For the mix, I included the following:

1/4 cup olive oil
2 small onions, chopped and sauteed in the oil
1 minced clove of garlic (added to the onion for the last minute of cooking)
to this mix went:

1 Cup long grain rice (uncooked, but soaked for 10 minutes to remove the starchiness)
1/2 large tomato that we had
1/2 large zuchinni, shredded
about 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
a dash of (homegrown) cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt
Juice of about 2 lemons

I think that I am leaving something out, but I'm not sure at this point.





About 1 tbs of this mixture goes into the grape leaves for rolling.  Sides fold in, then the top comes down, and rolled.  Not too tight, as the rice will expand when cooking.  The only picture that I have of the finished product are in this photo, out of focus in the back.  Sorry about that!



These then went into a dutch oven lined with the grape leaves that I didn't use (to prevent sticking).  In went a cup of olive oil and some more lemon juice.  This gets covered with a plate, and weighted down, so that they don't blow up and/or unravel.  Water gets added to about the bottom of the plate.  Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about an hour.  Try one to see of the rice is cooked.  If so, then remove from heat, cool, and serve.