Day 1: Lettuce wraps

Day 2: Whole roasted chicken, Roasted potatoes with spinach pesto

Day 3: Homemade pizza, Tossed salad with red radish

Day 4: Dilly chicken salad, Leftover tossed salad

Day 5: Grilled brats (hold the bun), Lentils with cilantro lime vinaigrette, Sliced apples

Day 6: Sesame noodles with bok choi, Green smoothie

Day 7: Disappearing greens gumbo

Notes: Try out the whole roasted chicken. I’m telling you it is actually really easy to make, just takes a bit of cooking time. You then also have chicken bones to make your own broth that you can use in the gumbo. The other great thing is that you can pull off the extra chicken and have it ready to go for a chicken salad to eat within the next couple of days.  You get two dinners in one and it is so simple!

Finally! Today is the day our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share starts. This means that each week for the next 20 weeks we will be getting a box of vegetables/fruit from a local farm. We’ve been with Crossroads Community Farm for at least 6 years now and could not be happier! Cassie and Mike are the best farmers and provide a really high quality experience with delicious, organic produce. Where ever you live, I recommend supporting your local farmers and taking part in a produce share. However, if you don’t, no worries. Go to your farmer’s market or grocery store and you should be able to find just about any of the same produce that I have in season. And if you don’t see an ingredient, you can always omit it or substitute with something similar. My family eats a lot of vegetables, so we get a full weekly share and also supplement with our own gardens. For those of you following this blog for meal ideas to use your share without ending up with a bunch of wasted vegetables, I will have a special CSA notes section at the bottom of each meal plan (see below) to tell you how exactly I am using every single vegetable to it’s fullest each week. If you have other good ideas, feel free to share in the comments.

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. Please note that I typically get the pre-filled share each week without substitutions and challenge myself to find new ways to use different vegetables that I may not be familiar with. So, if you are customizing your share, you will need to make substitutions to follow my meal plans. And you certainly don’t need to make the whole week’s worth! This is a jumping off point for you so that none of those awesome veggies go to waste. We rarely eat out, so this is a replica of our actual meal plan for the week and we typically have leftovers for lunch the next day. Also note that every week we have homemade pizza night with a tossed salad. You can throw practically any veggie on the pizza, even lettuce. You can also toss those extra veggies into the salad if you need to use something up. 

A couple notes about cooking meals this week: I am assuming you all have onions/scallions and garlic/scapes/garlic powder on hand. Any other veggies in the recipes that are not mentioned below, I will be substituting with something from the CSA and will try to make that clear in the breakdown. This will be the same every week. I rarely buy extra vegetables at the store and instead rely on substitutions with what I have. There are SO many greens right now. I love it! You can stuff these greens into each meal for a burst of nutrition. If you want the greens fresh and raw, then plan to eat them within 2-3 days. If they are starting to wilt, that is the time to cook them and is why I purposefully put the gumbo at the end of the week! Greens cook down quickly to about a quarter of their original size so you can squeeze them into soups, stews, and sautes. Greens are also great for making pesto or sneaking into a smoothie. Don’t forget that just about every part of your veggies this week can be eaten. The tops of the radishes and turnips might be a little more bitter than other greens, but they go great in the gumbo. The stems from the cilantro and the dill can also be chopped up and used too. And of course any of the greens can be put in a big salad to eat over a few days as a side for dinner or a light lunch.

• Mustard Greens (Mustards, Arugula, or Mizuna):  Remove 1/3 of the leaves from the bag and transfer to the salad greens bag for tossed salad. The rest goes in the gumbo
• Radish – Daikon (purple or white from 2019 storage season):  small dice for lettuce wraps
• Potatoes, storage (from 2019 harvest) (1.0 bag – 2.5 lb):  Cut into half inch dice, toss with olive oil and spread out on a sheet pan. Roast in the oven at 375 for about 20 minutes until soft and then toss with pesto while still warm.
• Bok Choi: the lettuce wraps recipe calls for bok choi, but there are plenty of turnips and radishes, so instead I am using this in the sesame noodles. Snap peas are not available locally right now so skip them in this recipe.
• Salad Turnips: Cut off the green tops and use for the gumbo. Dice the turnips for lettuce wraps
• Dill: dilly chicken salad – add the whole bunch chopped for a nice zing of dill. If you don’t want to use all of it you could also toss some with your salad or mix with cream cheese and onion salt for a veggie dip or sandwich spread. Omit the celery from the chicken salad unless you already have some on hand.
• Spinach: 2/3 of the bag for pesto, 1/3 of the bag for green smoothie. Gumbo recipe also calls for spinach, but you’ll have plenty of other greens to use.
• Cilantro: the whole bunch goes into the cilantro lime vinaigrette
• Lettuce Head, Red: lettuce wraps, any leftover will be chopped and put with salad mix for tossed salad
• Kale, Red Russian or Green: remove the tough stems (compost) then roughly chop for the greens gumbo
• Radish, Red: green tops chopped and added to gumbo; radish sliced for tossed salad
• Salad Mix: tossed salad