Italian Sausage and Harvest Vegetable Soup

Variety is the spice of life, as they say. Because of that, we wandered back to The Fresh Market & Friends Cookbook. We had tried the Smoky Corn Risotto and it was very good. So we ventured to the Italian Sausage & Harvest Vegetable Soup recipe.

First we took 1/2 pound of ground Italian sausage and rolled them into small meatballs.


Then in a stock pot, we cooked those and 2 diced onions in 2 tablespoons of olive oil (the reciped called for onion wedges).

After about 10 minutes, add 1 minced garlic clove, 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, 1 tablespoon fresh thyme, 6 chopped carrots, 3 peeled and cubed baking potatoes, 3 cups chopped tomatoes and 2 cups chicken broth. (The recipe called for just one cup, but with the amount of veggies we piled in, we saw a second cup was needed.)


Then we let that boil slowly and the covered and simmered for 45 minutes. At the end, we seasoned with salt and pepper and garnished with shopped parsley.


The result was a big, hearty winter soup dish that will melt any heart. The sausage that we used was quite flavorful and packed a very nice punch. The potatoes turned out just a bit overcooked, but fine for my tastes; Melissa found them a bit more harsh because of that.

Meatball Casserole

This recipe (Healthy Cooking magazine, January 2009) was one that we picked out because we generally have a lot of the ingredients for it, so it makes it cheap to buy for when we go grocery shopping.

The first thing to do is to cook the whole wheat pasta; rinse and set aside.

Then in a bowl, combine the bread crumbs (the recipe calls for seasoned; we used panko), grated Parmesan, egg substitute, Italian seasoning, onion powder, salt, garlic powder and ground turkey.


Mix well and then combine into balls and place on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray.


Cook those meatballs for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Combine the meatballs and marinara sauce and spoon about half of that mixture into a baking dish. top with a layer of pasta, cottage cheese, mozzarella and Parmesan. Repeat.

Cook at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.


The sauce we used was a red pepper sauce and it provided for a nice flavor profile in the dish. Unfortunately, since we decided to increase the meal size to accommodate the amount of turkey we had, we didn't add enough salt and the turkey tasted a bit bland. If we make this again, we will be sure to add some more seasonings in the meatball formation step. Aside from that, though, the meal was very good.