The Plan:
Day 1: Quiche with beet greens and scallions
Day 2: Large chopped salad (chickpeas, olives, salami, cucumber, green pepper, scallion), Dark velvet beet cookies
Day 3: Homemade pizza with pesto
Day 4: Grilled zucchini, onion, and fennel sandwiches
Day 5: Unstuffed cabbage
Day 6: Tuna salad sandwiches with kohlrabi slices
Day 7: Vegetable curry with broccoli, kale, onion, and rice
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)
- Ground beef from Mastodon Valley Farm meat share (freezer)
Into Storage:
- Blueberries (freezer)
Notes: What to do when you don’t like a vegetable
I am in love with the heart-shaped beet that I got in my farm box this week (see picture above)! It is so beautiful and picture perfect that I almost want to take a bite right out of it. Almost. The problem is that beets are one of those vegetables that I struggle to enjoy. Beet greens are delicious, but the bulbs are another story. They have a sort of sweet flavor, but for me the predominate taste is dirt.
I think everyone has at least one vegetable that they don’t enjoy. In addition to beets, I also do not like cooked peas (fresh snap peas and snow peas on the other hand are delicious). The peas go back to childhood when I had to eat a certain amount of frozen, cooked peas before I could leave the table. They were wrinkled and mushy and just plain gross. I ended up swallowing them whole with my nose plugged.
Since I am the cook in our family, I make sure that I don’t eliminate a food based on my personal preferences, especially if it provides a good amount of nutrition. So what do you do when you simply don’t like a vegetable, but the rest of your household enjoys it? Here are some ideas
- Try preparing in a new way. Instead of steaming, try roasting. Add different spices. Etc.
- Eat them fresh and raw (this is how I started to like peas). The taste and texture are very different compared to cooked.
- Cook into a strongly flavored dish that covers up the taste of the offending vegetable. Garlic does wonders.
- Chop them up very small to hide in a dish. I like to sneak greens, shredded carrots, and shredded zucchini into meatloaf. No one ever knows.
- Blend into smoothies (greens work well)
- Bake into cookies and breads. Check out the beet cookie recipe linked above or go for the classic zucchini bread.
- When all else fails, try not to draw attention to yourself at the dinner table. Take a very small amount and swallow it as quickly as possible. The last thing I want to do is give my kids an excuse not to eat their own vegetables! Kids are different in that their taste buds change drastically as they get older. They have to try something many, many times before they can really know if they like it. I don’t want to sway any opinions with my own.
With these strategies, I have found that I can now tolerate beets and peas and the rest of my family can still enjoy them too.
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): zucchini sandwiches
1 Scallions (1.0 bunch): 1 have 3 total – 2 in quiche, 1 on chopped salad
1 Kohlrabi (1.0 bulb): tuna salad sandwiches. Peel off tough out layer and thinly slice into rounds to top each sandwich. It adds a lovely crunch
1 Broccoli (1.0 head): curry
1 Cabbage, Green (1.0 head): unstuffed cabbage
2 Zucchini, Green and/or Gold (1.0 count): zucchini sandwiches
1 Basil (1.0 bunch): Pesto to go on pizza (I’m using garlic powder)
1 Peas, Sugar OR Snow (1.0 Unit): We will eat these raw for snacks, any leftover will go in the curry
1 Lettuce, Romaine (1.0 head): tossed salad to serve with pizza
1 Onion, Purplette (1.0 bunch): I have 3 total – 1 for zucchini sandwiches, 1 for unstuffed cabbage, 1 for curry
1 Beet (1.0 bunch): cut off the greens and use in the quiche (roughly chop and briefly sauté in olive oil until they wilt then drain off any liquid before adding to the pie crust). Beet bulbs used to make cookies.
1 Kale, Lacinato (1.0 bunch): curry
1 Cucumber (1.0 count): First of the season! add to chopped salad
1 Pepper, Green (1.0 count): Diced for tossed salad
