Prep

I leave for Armenia on Sunday and will be gone for two weeks! [Stay tuned for stories from my adventures; I will have the iPod and can post here when I have WiFi (mainly when we are in Yerevan, the capital.)]

Today I am spending the day cooking/baking meals and snacks for Tony and the girls. All these "recipes" do not have freezing and cooking instructions so this is a complete experiement. Hopefully the family will report back on how easy the items were to cook and how delicious they were so I can refer to them again!

Local Egg-Sausage Muffins (double batch)

• 2 pounds Warren Wilson breakfast sausage
• 2 dozen local eggs
• rainbow chard (sautéed)

Thankfully it is farmer's market season!! I picked up the chard and spinach at the West Asheville Tailgate market yesterday. (We are growing a bunch of weeds this summer in our garden... sigh... a story for another day.)

The first half of the ingredients above when into the oven at 350 for 20 minutes as muffins but I hadn't drained the grease off the sausage and then filled each muffin slot WAY too full so grease spilled over into the bottom of my oven, making a huge mess. (At the moment I am writing this post in procrastination of oven cleaning.) So I had to abandon ship and turn the oven off. Thankfully the first batch was finished! SO

I turned the second half of the ingredients into a casserole by adding:

• 2 packages of mystery squash purée (from last summer)
• spinach

and then put it all in a casserole dish to freeze. Total experiment; we shall see! The only ingredients that were cooked before I put the second half in the freezer were the sausage and chard. (The first 12 muffins were fully cooked and then went into the freezer.)

Greens and Chicken Soup AKA Nana Soup
This is the standard soup that I make and we all devour each week; especially the kiddos. Akilah likes to call it "Nana Soup" because my mom also makes it for us when we go visit.

• onion
• celery
• carrots
• kale
• potatoes
• chicken
• bone broth (except this time I slacked on the bone broth because I haven't made any in awhile and just used - filtered water, this chicken base, Himalayan pink salt, and pepper)

Lentils and Veggies
Sauté the following:

• onion (1/2 a very large)
• garlic (4 cloves)
• celery (4 stalks)
• fennel (1 large bulb)
• carrots (4 large)

Then add (I didn't really measure these) and then let it all cook for about an hour:

• broth
• rainbow chard
• lentils
• potatoes
• fenugreek
• cumin
• Himalayan pink salt
• pepper

Pasta Casserole
1 package rice/quinoa GF pasta (this one is our favorite; it is from Trader Joes)
1 pound ground beef
2 packages mystery squash purée (and now it is finally all gone)
3/4 jar pasta sauce (no, I did not make it this time... this one is our favorite and is also from TJ's)
spinach

Cook pasta. Brown beef. Mix squash purée with browned beef. Place a crap ton of spinach (uncooked) in the bottom of the casserole dish. Place cooked pasta on top of spinach. Add sauce. Add meat/squash mixture on top. Freeze.

I did not originally intend to add a red sauce to this dish but thought it might need some more liquid when taken out of the freezer and cooked. Yes, a total experiment!)

Snacks
I will also be making our standard Date Balls and Gummy Snacks. And perhaps baking a few treats...