The Plan:
Day 1: Homemade hummus plate with salad turnips, radish, olives, and pita bread
Day 2: Lasagna with spinach sneaked in
Day 3: Homemade pizza, Tossed salad
Day 4: Creamy mushroom and wild rice soup with ramps
Day 5: Sauteed radish and turnip greens topped with a fried egg, Orange ginger smoothie
Day 6: Mediterranean greens and orzo salad (hold the cucumbers since they are not in season)
Day 7: Grilled steak, Arugula pesto potatoes
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)
- Homemade pasta sauce (made last season and frozen in zip top bag)
Into Storage:
- Extra lasagna (double recipe and put one in aluminum pan to freeze)
Notes: Give in to Nature
Anyone out there who has spent years trying to get the perfect yard? No? Just me? The easy solution is to use chemical weedkillers and fertilizers, which I did when we first moved to our house where we have between 1/4 and 1/2 acre of land. Once I started having kids and a dog, I no longer wanted to put those chemicals where my baby would be crawling around stuffing handfuls of grass in his mouth. Now for the past 10 years we have been practicing organic lawn care. This requires much more time and more money. I spent countless hours picking dandelions and other “weeds” out of the lawn so that ours could match everyone else in the neighborhood. If your lawn wasn’t dandelion free then you were the odd one on the block. The one who just didn’t have it together. Not a good citizen. Probably a bad person.
This year I decided to stop fighting. It is No Mow May (see last weeks post for an explanation) and I am letting those dandelions and violets go crazy! Do you know what is happening? I feel a relief. Giving into nature is very freeing. Such a weight off my shoulders to know that I don’t have to have a perfect lawn, whatever that actually means. It is time to stop caring what our neighbors think and start caring what Mother Nature thinks.
I used to think the Wisconsin landscape was so blah. Colorado with mountains and the coasts with beaches, that was where the real beauty was. But when I started to pay more attention to the prairies and Oak Savannahs that are native to my area, it became clear that Wisconsin is quite beautiful. I now recognize most prairie plants and know what flowers at what times of the year.
No Mow May is just the beginning for me. It is time to put down my sword (weed picker) and give in to nature. I have plans to start converting unused areas of our lawn into garden beds with native prairie plants. And the remaining lawn will have a healthy dose of “weeds” according to Mother Nature. I’m looking forward to lower maintenance, less money spent, peace of mind, and to me a beautiful landscape!
Parts of my yard so far in No Mow May:
CSA Breakdown: For those of you also using Keewaydin Farms, here is a breakdown of how I will use each piece of produce this week. See the first CSA post from last season for details of how I structure the plans.
-Salad Mix: tossed salad
-Spinach: lasagna
-Mustard Greens: tossed salad
-Mizuna: Orzo salad
-Arugula: pesto
-Green Garlic: hummus and pesto
-Overwintered Potatoes: pesto potatoes
-Wild Ramps: wild rice and mushroom soup
-Multicolored Radish: cut off greens and sauté in olive oil, salt, pepper; the bulbs sliced to serve with hummus
-Salad Turnips: cut off greens and sauté in olive oil, salt, pepper; the bulbs sliced to serve with hummus
