The Plan:
Day 1: Potato, fennel, and leek soup
Day 2: Tatsoi and sweet potato salad with roasted garlic dressing
Day 3: Homemade pizza, Tossed salad with bell pepper
Day 4: Acorn squash pancakes with maple butter
Day 5: Grilled ginger sesame chicken chopped salad
Day 6: Grilled cheeseburgers, Roasted beets and brussels sprouts with garlic thyme dressing
Day 7: Pasta alla Norma (last eggplant!), Sauteed kale
This meal plan was curated using local foods that are in season now or preserved during the peak growing season in the U.S. Midwest. The plan is an exact replica of what our family is eating this week unless we are out of town. Meal plans are developed using whole foods and my meal planning system (click here!) and are meant to be healthy and easy to prepare. Most recipes will take no more than 30 minutes of active cooking time. Occasionally meals may require all day slow cooking, advanced prep, or some oven time. Recipes are provided when available. I sincerely hope this will help with your own meal planning!
Pantry Shuffle:
Out of Storage: (preserved when in season and coming out of my root cellar, freezer, canned, or dehydrated stash)
- Nothing this week
Into Storage:
- Apples (refrigerator “root cellar”)
- Pumpkin puree (freezer)
- Onions (root cellar)
- Potatoes (root cellar)
Notes: Garden Season Wrap-up and Green Life Philosophy Update
Garden wrap-up: Mixed results for my garden this year. I finally got a deer fence up, but not soon enough! They got to my strawberry plants first so I didn’t have a big crop in June like usual. We have had quite a few in the later summer season since they are an everbearing variety. In fact we are still getting some flowers and berries! You can see in the pictures below that we have one 10’x4′ garden dedicated to strawberries.
Because of the delay in getting the fence up I waited until mid to end of June to get my seedlings out. This was a bad combination with the drought and we ended up with delayed maturing of the plants and very small tomatoes, peppers, popcorn and more. Somehow our pumpkins went bonkers! You can see in the pictures below that we got several carving pumpkins and lot of pie pumpkins considering the small space. We even had a rogue pumpkin sprout near our chicken coup and add to our harvest.
Overall, I enjoyed the continued improvements to my garden this year, but am looking forwards to finally bringing it all together next season with indoor seedlings, timely transplants, more space, irrigation, and fencing – everything I’ve been working on over the past 5 years or so. Imagine growing a whole farm’s worth of vegetables for hundreds of people. Props to the owners of CSA’s that provide us with all the local produce to supplement our gardens. Thanks Crossroads!!
I’d love to hear about your garden successes and failures. Drop me a message or comment on the post
Personal update: Sadly, this will be my last weekly meal plan post for awhile. There has been an unexpected health change in our family that needs to be addressed with a significant dietary change. I love all things food, so I am ready for the challenge, but the new diet does not jive with my ideals of local, seasonal, and environmental eating. So, I’m going to take a break, retool, and figure out how I can move forwards. Hopefully I’ll be back with more great meal plans soon.
CSA Breakdown:
For those of you also using Crossroads Community Farm, here is a breakdown of how I will use each piece of produce this week. See the first CSA post from this season for details of how I structure the plans.
1 Fennel (1.0 bulb): potato soup
1 Onion, Red (1.0 count): storage for later use
1 Eggplant, Globe BABY (1.0 count): pasta alla Norma
1 Kale, Green Curly (1.0 bunch): sauteed in olive oil to serve with pasta alla Norma
1 Tatsoi (1.0 head): sweet potato salad
1 Potato – Red (1.0 bag – 3 lb): potato leek soup
1 Spaghetti Squash (1.0 count): store until I get more so we can make squash bowls for the whole family
1 Napa Cabbage (1.0 head): chicken chopped salad
1 Acorn Squash (1.0 count): squash pancakes
1 Brussels Sprouts (1.0 box): roasted to serve with burgers
1 Lettuce, Red Leaf (1.0 head): tossed salad to serve with pizza
1 Onion, Yellow (1.0 count): storage for later use
2 Beet (1.0 count): roasted to serve with burgers
1 Pepper, Red Bell (1.0 count): diced for tossed salad
1 Garlic, bulb (1.0 count): potato soup, tatsoi salad, roasted beets and brussels, pasta alla Norma
