The Plan:
Day 1: Burrito bowls with cilantro lime rice, black beans, diced bell peppers, and salsa
Day 2: Coconut chicken soup
Day 3: Homemade pizza, Orange slices
Day 4: Butternut squash pancakes with maple butter, Frozen fruit smoothie with blueberries, ginger, oranges
Day 5: Italian sausage with peppers and onions
Day 6: Stone soup, Crusty bread
Day 7: Pork chops with apples, Roasted root vegetables with garlic thyme dressing
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)
- Diced bell peppers (frozen in zip top bags)
- Black beans (prepped/cooked in past from dry beans and frozen in reused Talenti Gelato containers)
- Homemade chicken broth (frozen in silicone bags)
- Butternut squash cubes (frozen in zip top bags)
- Blueberries (frozen in gallon zip top bag)
- Pepper/onion pack (sliced in summer/fall and frozen in gallon zip top bags)
- Homemade pasta sauce (frozen in zip top bags in summer/fall)
- Italian sausage or pork chops from Mastodon Valley Farm meat share
- Stone soup (frozen in gallon zip top bag)
- Apples (from refrigerator “cellar”)
- Carrots (from refrigerator “cellar”)
- Beets (from refrigerator “cellar”)
Into Storage:
- Nothing this week
Notes: Meal Prep
I can’t stress enough how much meal prep will make dinnertime so easy. Supper is such a tricky time of day. It is the witching hour when school/work is done and the demons are out. You need food on the table now!
I’ve tried a lot of different techniques and really the only way I can get my family healthy food most days is to meal prep. This could mean having a homemade frozen meal that you can pull out and heat up, or chopping ingredients in advance so that you can throw everything together as quickly as possible.
Seasonal eating actually makes this very easy for me in the winter since I have already prepped and preserved a lot of food in the summer and fall. For example all I have to do this week for the Italian sausage recipe is to sauté the meat and add in the already chopped onions and peppers from the freezer, then mix in my homemade pasta sauce. This will take me about 20 minutes total. The Stone soup is also from my freezer, stored from a previous double batch. All I have to do is remember to take it out of the freezer to defrost, then heat and serve when I get home from work.
If you don’t have anything already prepped in your freezer, no worries! There are other ways you can prep and plan ahead too. For example, this week I’ve scheduled 2 separate meals on consecutive days with similar ingredients. Day 1, make a double batch of rice and chop all of your cilantro. Save half and refrigerate to use in the coconut chicken soup the next day.
Prepping on the weekend is another technique that I use, especially in the growing season when the fresh food is coming fast and furious. The more you can get chopped and ready to use, the more likely you will actually use it when the time comes. When you are planning your meals for the week, make sure you also plan to set aside about an hour over the weekend or on an evening to go over your meals and cut up or cook whatever you can in advance. Most chopped produce or things like baked squash will keep in the refrigerator for several days. If plans change, you can always throw your prepped food in the freezer in a zip top bag to use later on.
All of these strategies will get that healthy food in those hungry mouths as fast as possible and make your evenings so much more enjoyable!
How do you meal prep?
