The Plan:
Day 1: BLT chopped salad, Fruit salad (peaches, grapes, musk melon)
Day 2: Savory corn pudding with peppers, Coleslaw, Watermelon slices
Day 3: Homemade pizza, Greek salad
Day 4: Fattoush salad with homemade pita chips (romaine, tomato, cucumber, parsley, mint, lemon vinaigrette, dash of sumac and allspice), Homemade hummus
Day 5: Roasted cauliflower over curried quinoa
Day 6: Caprese salad (tomato, fresh mozzarella, basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar) , Peaches and cream pie
Day 7: Italian lentil salad, Steamed green beans, Zucchini muffins
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)
- Bacon from Mastodon Valley Farm meat share
Into Storage:
- Sweet Corn (cut off the cob and frozen in zip top bags)
- Zucchini muffins (frozen in zip top bags – makes really easy “grab and go” for packing school lunches!)
- Sauerkraut
- Basil flakes (dehydrated and crumbled to use for winter seasoning)
- Cauliflower (cut into florets and frozen in zip top bags – I don’t blanch)
- Broccoli (cut into florets and frozen in zip top bags – I don’t blanch)
- Green beans (cut into 1 inch pieces and frozen in zip top bags – I don’t blanch)
Notes: Summer is for Salads
August is one of my favorite months and not just because the weather is lovely in Wisconsin. My love mostly comes from the large abundance of produce overwhelming my garden and the farm fields, because that means it is salad time! Yes, I have been eating a lot of salad all spring and summer, but now it is time to go into overdrive. You will see salad enter my meal plan not once, not twice, but a total of 7 times this week!
Summer is the season to embrace everything veggie (and fruit). Load up your plate with a large serving of vegetables, then top with a grain/protein, and lightly dress with homemade vinaigrette. It is amazing how salads can be so diverse. My taste buds never get bored, even when eating salad every day of the week.
With all of the toppings, many of the salads I am making this week are filling can be used as a main dish rather than a side. That means less meat and more vegetarian meals.
When you eat with the seasons, you eat as much as you can when it is available and the time for salad is now! Particularly, make sure you are filling up on peaches, sweet corn, and cucumbers. They won’t be around much longer.
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.
Carrots (1.0 bag): 2-3 shredded for coleslaw, the rest will be cut into sticks and putting in glass containers filled with water in the fridge for snacks and packing school lunches
Lettuce, Romaine (1.0 head): BLT chopped salad (I have an extra head of lettuce for the Fattoush salad)
Tomatoes (1.0 increment): BLT chopped salad, Fattoush salad, Caprese salad
Beans, Green (1.0 bag): steamed and served with lentil salad
Pepper, Anaheim (green, hot) (1.0 count): corn pudding. I remove the seeds first to lower the heat
Cabbage, Green (1.0 head): 1/2 for coleslaw, 1/2 to make sauerkraut to keep on hand
Cauliflower (1.0 head): roasted cauliflower over curried quinoa
Zucchini, Green and/or Gold (1.0 count): zucchini muffins
Basil (1.0 bunch): Caprese salad, rest will be dehydrated to use in the winter
Cucumber (1.0 count): Greek salad, Fattoush salad, Lentil salad (I have extra cucumbers)
A1 Corn, Sweet (some tips cut): 2 for BLT salad, 4 for Corn pudding
