I recently purchased a big box of tea and tea-related supplies from Stash, as I've gotten into the habit of having a cup of tea first thing in the morning, plus Elliot and I have a long-standing tradition of sharing a pot of tea over leisurely brunches on the weekends. Because Stash is lovely, they included some samples with my order, including a sample of Mango Passionfruit Iced Tea. I cold-brewed some and it was delicious, but once the sample was gone we wanted more iced refreshment, so I took the initiative.

As far as the collard greens go, we still had to use up the offerings from last week's farm share. The collards were the last to go, purposefully, since they were the hardiest produce we received. We didn't have enough to make it worthwhile for me to cook the greens by themselves, but I found a new recipe that could be promising.

• 1 quart hot water
• 5 peach black tea bags
• 2 Lady Grey tea bags (or whatever kind(s) of tea you like!)
• 1 quart cold water
• sugar to taste (if desired)

Bring one quart of water to a boil in your kettle. In a large heatproof container or pitcher (I used a 1-quart Pyrex measuring cup), deposit the tea bags and cover with hot water. Steep for about 4 minutes. Remove tea bags, stir in sugar if using, allow to cool down. Transfer to a pitcher and add cold water. Chill for several hours. Serve with a lemon or lime wedge.

When using up our collards, I visited several recipe websites for inspiration. Most were based around a traditional "soul food" preparation of the greens, cooked to death with a hunk of pork in them. That's fine, but I barely had enough greens to wilt down to one or two servings -- not worth buying a hog jowl for. So I found this recipe for a greens casserole and decided to give it a shot. I modified it to suit my purposes. I would not suggest following this recipe exactly, since it had some issues, but here's what we did:

• 3 sausages (we used fresh chicken sausage)
• 1 bunch collard greens, washed, de-stemmed, and roughly chopped
• several handfuls baby spinach
• 1.5 "cups" (our rice maker standard, about 3/4 of a cup) jasmine rice
• ~2 cups chicken broth
• 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. dried parsley
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. black pepper
• 1/4 tsp. chili powder
• 2 Tbsp. melted butter
• 3/4 cup breadcrumbs

  Grease a large casserole or baking dish (or, in our case, Pyrex punch bowl...). Preheat oven to 350. Cook the rice in the chicken broth, either in a rice cooker (ours kind of burned the broth on the bottom) or pot. Take the sausage meat out of the casings and brown in a nonstick skillet. Remove sausage, cook chopped collards and spinach in sausage grease (add olive oil if using a lean sausage as we did) with salt. Remove greens when wilted. Beat eggs together with parsley, chili powder and pepper. Add shredded cheese and egg mixture to cooked rice and mix well; fold in greens and sausage. Toss breadcrumbs in melted butter to make a crumbly topped, spread over the top of casserole. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes.

This came out... weird. It was, I think, too dry and too eggy, and maybe a little overdone. I would try this again using only one egg, replacing the other with perhaps 1/2 cup of milk. The flavors were really tasty, but it had a quiche-like aspect to it that wasn't really what we were going for. Also, we used a container that was too big -- our 1.5-quart casserole dish wouldn't quite cut it, but a narrower and deeper baking dish probably would have retained more moisture. Funny how I have all these kitchen things that I never use (miniature tart pans?) but not a big casserole dish. Or cheese grater. This will have to be remedied.