The Plan:
Day 1: Lentil soup with green garlic olive oil, Crusty sourdough bread
Day 2: Cilantro lime rice bowls
Day 3: Homemade pizza, Mixed greens salad with radishes
Day 4: Baked salmon with yogurt dill sauce, Shaved beet and carrot salad, Slow cooker applesauce
Day 5: Italian sausage with onions and peppers
Day 6: Egg scramble with sauteed greens and chevre cheese
Day 7: Homemade vegetable soup
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)
- Apples, carrots (refrigerator “root cellar”)
- Pepper and onion pack, broccoli, green beans, corn, cauliflower, vegetable broth, cannellini beans, diced tomatoes (freezer)
Into Storage: nothing this week
Notes: Kitchen Clean Out
This week, I spent some time going through my freezers, refrigerators, root cellar, and pantries. I am nearing the end of the life of most of the produce that I stored from the 2022 growing season and it is time to use up what I can. Over the next couple of weeks I am really loading in the veggies that I’ve stored along with all the fresh greens that are coming from Keewaydin Farms spring farm box.
There are 2 reasons I am doing this right now:
1 – I don’t want all my hard work of preserving food to go to waste
2 – I don’t want the food to end up in the landfill which is one of the largest ways that individuals contribute to our environmental demise
First, I’m using up the last of the apples that I stored. They are starting to get a little wrinkled so that means it is time to make a big batch of applesauce.
Next, I’m tackling a lot of the food that is in my freezer. One of the best ways to use up all that frozen produce is to make a vegetable soup. Simply boil some vegetable broth, add in any vegetables you have on hand, dump in a protein source (I’m using cannellini beans), and sprinkle in seasoning. It isn’t very fancy, but it is very tasty!
I still have loads of carrots and I plan to shred and shave some for salads, and add some to the soup. We’ll be eating carrots for awhile.
Beyond that I have a few freezer meals left to use in the coming weeks on busy nights as well as some butternut squash that I’ll try to work into my plan next week.
It is pretty amazing how long my preserved food was able to carry us through the past 6 months and allow us to still eat nutritious, local, produce.
So, for this last week of Earth Month, take some time to go clean out your own freezers/pantries, plan your meals around the food that needs to be eaten, and save some food from the landfill!
