When my family comes to visit, preparing food ahead of time is always on the agenda. I want to spend as much time with them as possible , I truly suffer from FOMO. Fear of missing out. I don't want to be in the kitchen while the gang is outside playing. I want to play too.馃
That being said, today I was up by 5am, coffee on, crock pots out. We are going Italian this weekend, starting with fresh marinara sauce.
My marinara sauce is rather on the plain side. Starting with basic tomato sauce from last years harvest, I will start it heating in my crock pot. I will only add small amounts of seasoning. Basil, onion powder, garlic powder and black pepper.
I never use salt at this stage of the process.
What I do add is some grated carrots, this will help to counter balance the tartness of the tomato adding some sweetness from the carrot.
I will bring this to a simmer and leave it alone for around two hours.
In the mean time, I will be baking links of sausage in the oven while preparing a very large bowl of meatball mix.
Here's the ingredients for the meatballs:
6 lbs. of chopped meat (can be beef, pork, turkey, chicken)
I used a mix of beef, pork and turkey.
6 eggs
4 cloves of garlic
2 cups of Italian style bread crumbs
3/4 to 1 cup of milk.
This size mix took a while to fold it altogether, once my hands started to cramp up, I figured good enough.馃し鈥嶁檧
OK, sausage almost done, time to get it out of the oven and into the sauce. Now I bake the sausage just long enough to brown it up and get some of the fat out.
You never want to cook the sausage completely , you want to finish cooking them in the rather plain
sauce. The crock pot will now do it's thing for several hours, allowing all the flavors to meld.
Now the really fun part, rolling the meatballs.
This could take some time as well as risking wrist pain, hand cramping or maybe even paralysis . hehe
At least that's what I told 
But I hardly finished my list of complaints and he was rolling up his sleeves and washing his hands, pretty big ones by the way, to help me roll 'em up!
So we rolled and rolled and rolled and rolled and rolled and rolled,........... 75 medium sized meatballs later, the big bowl was empty. I could not have done it without my assistant, at least not before nightfall.
I am telling you, the hubby really got the hang of it quickly.
Time to fire up #2 crock pot.
Now that the sauce is seasoned nicely from the sausage, I will sift off some gravy to fill the smaller pot which will then cook some of these meatball.
Now I used the word some, only about 20 or so meatballs will be cooked in the crockpot. They will go in raw, be cooked on low heat for about 8 hours. By cooking them this way, the rather plain marinara sauce will grab some savory flavor.
All the rest of the meatballs will be baked on parchment paper in a 350 degree oven for around 30 minutes.
This allows for quicker cook time and I can drain the fat off.
Pasta will be served, spaghetti, rigatoni and small shells, something for everyone including the little ones.
Sub rolls and grated mozzarella cheese will be at the ready when the natives get restless and the time comes
to feed the masses.
What do you think 
To all my foodie friends in #hive ville, have a wonderful and gastronomical weekend.
Beware of the food coma, it can creep up fast.
馃榿馃崟馃崯馃馃崝馃尞