America and cabbages: wtf is our problem?

On Friday, my office mate brought me some left over kimchi soup that she had made. Kimchi soup is a spicy Korean cabbage soup, and I love it. I'm one of the rare non-Asians who likes the smell as well as the taste. I think it's because I had across-the-street neighbor playmates when I was a kid who were Korean, and their house always smelled like Korean cooking. So it's a happy comfort smell.

So for lunch today, I cooked up some rice and had the soup over it, which is an excellent way to eat it. Delicious! But it got me thinking.

What the hell is wrong with Americans when it comes to cabbage? Eastern Europeans grow it, eat it, and love it. Stuff it, pickle it, cook it all sorts of wonderful ways. East Asians grow, eat, and love it too. They even ferment it. Russian cuisine uses lots of it too. Cabbage is tasty, filling, fibrous, etc. Good for you, but also flavorful. And there are so many interesting ways to cook it!

But here? We just ignore it. Sure, we stick some raw cabbage into a salad or slaw, etc. But we don't really eat it as a staple vegetable. There should be more kimchi in this country. And more borscht (with cabbage floating in it). And braised Hungarian cabbage with dumplings. Not to mention a thousand other tasty things one can do with cabbage that I've probably never heard of.

There are so many exciting flavors in this world, so many deliriously tasty combinations. Why are we so narrow in our ingredients and flavors?