I love to cook.  And I love to cook with real, whole ingredients.  But sometimes Monday evening arrives, and I don’t feel like starting anything from scratch.  For such occasions we keep a few easy meals in the freezer.  One of our go-to proteins is precooked chicken sausages:

This particular brand came from BJ’s (wholesale club,) but there is a natural brand we really like from Kroger as well.  Here’s why I think these are great:

1. I know what all the ingredients are without having to do any research.  Chicken, vegetables, spices.  I am a firm believer that if you don’t know what something is you probably shouldn’t eat it (not often, anyway), so I really appreciate this list of ingredients.  Plus, the nutrition facts aren’t too shabby either.

2. They taste fantastic.  The brand we find at Kroger (I can’t think of the name at the moment) has a chicken-apple flavor that is so good.  This was the first time we’d tried the Italian, and we will definitely buy it again!

3.  They are super easy to make.  The package actually contains two separate packs of five sausages;  we only opened one, sliced the sausages in half, lengthwise, and warmed/browned them in a skillet.  So simple!

(Andrew’s plate)

(Catherine’s plate)

We made a mushroom quinoa pilaf with sun-dried tomatoes to go with the sausage, plus some sauteed lemon-garlic spinach.  If either of those sound fancy, don’t be fooled: all we did for the quinoa pilaf was put the quinoa, sliced mushrooms, olive oil, and chicken broth in the rice cooker, then add the sun-dried tomatoes at the end.  The spinach was about as easy:  Saute garlic in olive oil, then add fresh spinach, and continue to stir and add more spinach as it wilts.  Squeeze lemon juice in before serving.

Everything was done in the time it took for the rice cooker to finish the quinoa (30 minutes, tops.)  Very easy, and quite delicious for a quick, weeknight dinner!