The Plan:
Day 1: Taco Chili, Corn muffins
Day 2: Bean and cheese enchiladas
Day 3: Homemade pizza, Carrot sticks
Day 4: Chicken piccata, Basic baked squash
Day 5: Homemade ramen with leftover chicken, carrots, kale, mushrooms, soba noodles and hard boiled eggs
Day 6: Baked lemon butter cod, Apple and golden beet slaw
Day 7: Spaghetti squash bowls with homemade pasta sauce and mozzarella
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
- Diced tomatoes (diced and frozen in zip top bags)
- Kidney beans (from dry pantry supply, soaked and cooked)
- Corn (cut from cob and frozen in zip top bags)
- Bean and cheese enchiladas (premade and frozen in aluminum pan; add tomato juice before baking)
- Carrots (stored in refrigerator “cellar”)
- Butternut squash (stored in root cellar)
- Apples (stored in refrigerator “cellar”)
- Golden beets (stored in refrigerator “cellar”)
- Homemade pasta sauce (premade and stored in freezer in zip top bags)
- Chicken broth (frozen in zip top bags)
Into Storage:
- Corn muffins (freeze in zip top bag)
Notes: Root Cellar Clean Up
Every week I take stock of my root cellars to help with my meal planning. It has been about 5 months since I last added fresh produce to my cellars and I’ve noticed the leftovers are getting a little dehydrated and wrinkled, the apples a little soft. That means it is time to clean it out!!
I have to say this is the first year that I have been able to match our family consumption with what I have stored. Honestly, it has taken me a few years to figure it out this whole long term storage thing.
Sadly, the first year much of my produce headed to the compost pile because I didn’t store it correctly. I figured out that my basement storage room, although cold and into the low 50’s in the winter, isn’t cold enough or moist enough to store some vegetables like beets, carrots, radish, and apples for a long time.
Year two I figured out the temperatures and moisture that I need by adding an old refrigerator to the mix. Potatoes, squash, and sweet potatoes stayed in the basement storage room while the produce that needs high moisture and colder temps went into the fridge. However, I did not store nearly enough and ran out in January.
This year I think I finally figured out both storage and quantities. Did I do everything perfectly? No. There are always going to be a few items that end up rotting anyways or totally drying up. I just toss them in my compost tumblers and move on. Overall, it was a good storage year. Here we are nearing the end of March and I only have a few radishes, beets, carrots, potatoes, handful of apples, and one squash remaining.
My first spring produce CSA starts in 4 weeks so I will rely on the grocery store and my freezer for a month. But I really don’t think my root vegetables would have been good to eat in another month anyways. 6 months is a long time to store fresh food!
My project this week is to gather everything I have left in my cellars, figure out how I am going to use it and then give the cellars a good cleaning.
If you don’t have any root cellars of your own and you are interested in eating local year round, now might be a good time to explore the options in your own home. Use my mistakes to your advantage!
