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weekly meal plan

What’s in the Basket?

25 Mar 2012

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Spring variety is wonderful right now!

In the basket: swiss chard, green onions, garlic chives, purple amaranth greens, ugly cucumbers, ancho peppers, Italian frying peppers, beets, multi-colored carrots, strawberries, parsley, goat cheese, goat kefir. Purchased but not in the basket because they squish easily- 2 large bags of over-ripe and bruised tomatoes. Grand total $40.

Our meal plan this week is easy!

Tonight- just me, myself at home alone… leftovers
Sunday- Venison or pork 13-bean chili
Monday- Grilled Florida Mangrove Snapper with herb mustard glaze, parsley rice, honey-roasted carrots and garlicky sauteed chard
Tuesday- spaghetti with homemade marinara
Wednesday- Breakfast for dinner! Sweet potato skillets with leftover roast beef, green onions, mushrooms, peppers, and sunny-side-up eggs. Maybe with waffles.
Thursday- buckwheat feta burgers with parsley sauce, sweet potato oven fries, and green salad

Friday- off to visit the in-laws!

Lunches- this palm heart salad with shrimp for Jim and maybe the kids, Ethiopian yellow split pea stew for me with added carrots and squash and spelt injera, cucumbers and egg salad for the kids

By: Andi Houston Category: Weekly Meal Plans, What's in the Basket? Tags: , ,

Greens! Rutabaga! Meal Plan!

12 Feb 2012

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One of my guilty pleasures is looking in other people’s shopping carts to see what they’re eating at home; also, I know some people struggle with weekly meal planning. What’s In The Basket is your chance to “peek in my shopping cart” and see what is available at the farmer’s markets right now. Weekly Meal Plans will hopefully give you some new ideas on what to do with it.

In our local produce-centered diet, weekly meal planning starts at the farmer’s market.

Saturday mornings are for grocery shopping (when we’re home). We start at the 441 Farmer’s Market. My budget at the farmer’s market is $40. This week I bought: 1/2 large chicken from Laughing Chicken Farm, a rutabaga the size of my head, collard greens, lacinato kale, 5 mini pumpkins, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, romanesco cauliflower, a head of broccoli, daikon radish, four big kohlrabi, and a pastry for my starving daughter.

Meal planning for me is like a puzzle. What do we already have? How does it fit with what’s in season? What can I make to use up what I already have + what’s in season, and buying as little extra as possible? What sounds good?

Miso-cured Spanish mackerel with kimchi, rice, and various tsukemono

Butter chicken, butternut squash dal (but I’ll use sweet potato), stir-fried cauliflower, rice

Meatloaf in mini-pumpkins (with the grass-fed beef from the freezer or maybe venison), roasted kohlrabi, daikon and rutabaga in horseradish butter

White beans bake with sausage, kale, sweet potatoes and rosemary, maybe feta, maybe I’ll add some pasta. This might end up as soup, depending on the temperature outside. I’ll try and bake some rosemary bread for this meal.

Lunches: BLTs for the kids, BLT salads for the husband, broccoli with ranch dressing, and leftover dal for me.

By: Andi Houston Category: Weekly Meal Plans, What's in the Basket? Tags: , ,

Meal plan and winter garden!

7 Nov 2011

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Meal plan for the week… we have to eat some of this pork because literally nothing else will fit in the freezer.

Monday- tteokbokki with leftover char siu, shiitakes, and bok choy
Tuesday- red beans and rice with smoked pork hocks and neck bones
Wednesday-pho with homemade pork meatballs
Thursday- ginger beer-braised pulled pork sandwiches, sweet potato oven fries, buttered squash
Friday- leftovers or take-out pizza

I finally got the winter garden seeds planted this afternoon!

Planting the peas

I stopped at Gardener’s Edge a few days ago to buy seeds, and they talked me into two different winter peas, another kind of multicolored chard, and I picked up lacinato kale and a broad-leaf sage plant. I don’t know why, but I have no luck with sage. I have small forests of oregano and thyme, and in the winter grow tons of cilantro and parsley, but just cannot get sage to grow. This time I’m planting it in the fall and just see what happens.

Sweet potatoes, starting to yellow slightly but still hanging in there

I had plenty of bamboo stakes left so I made my own trellises, just four long stakes lashed together at head height, and planted several seeds of each kind of pea at the base of each stake.

In the corner closest in the photo is the oregano and rigani, which are slowly taking over the whole bed.

Currently growing or planted:

Fordhook Giant swiss chard
Multicolored swiss chard
Amish Snap peas
Blue Podded Shelling peas
Oregano
Rigani
Dill
Italian Parsley
Slow-bolting Cilantro
Garlic Chives
Sweet potatoes of an unknown variety

So excited!

By: Andi Houston Category: Garden Updates, Weekly Meal Plans Tags: , , , , ,

Pork week menu and seedling fail

2 Nov 2011

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This may seem like a lot of meat, but there are five of us and we eat about a pound of meat at each meal… only a 1/5 of a pound per person. I’m not going to post the posole recipe, it was not the best thing I’ve ever made, though with a little work it would be a great way to use up leftover pork roast.

It sure was beautiful, though! Leftover roast pork, hominy, green beans, and mole verde

Tuesday: Pork posole with roasted tomatillos
Wednesday: Dwaeji (pork belly) bulgogi with all the fixings
Thursday: Fried rice with the leftover bulgogi meat, Chinese sausages, and vegetables
Friday: Pho

Tomatillos and green chiles, ready for roasting. So pretty!

Something has mown all of my lettuce and chard seedlings back down to the ground. I’m going to plant again this weekend and see how it goes. Maybe I’ll try sweet peas instead.

By: Andi Houston Category: Garden Updates, Weekly Meal Plans Tags: , , ,

Cool weather and a bundt cake

3 Oct 2011

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This past weekend marked the beginning of the cool weather for us here in Gainesville, and it was glorious. Mid-50′s to low 60′s each morning warming up to 80 each day, and not a cloud in the sky. I had to pull a sweater down from the top of the closet on my way to the farmer’s market Saturday morning.

Peppers, green papaya, garlic chives, green onions, eggplant, cucumbers, and a chicken

This is going to be a very busy week, so when the grill was going yesterday I roasted the peppers, eggplant, and a lonely leftover zucchini. Half the peppers and all of the eggplant made a batch of eggplant-walnut dip with feta cheese, and this will be my lunch for the next few days. The other half of the peppers and the zucchini will go in the chickpea salad.

Monday- Florida Crunch Salad, Green papaya salad, chickpea salad
Tuesday- dinner party! spaghetti with marinara for the kids, bucatini carbonara for the grown-ups
Wednesday- leftover salads in rice paper rolls with glass noodles, steamed dumplings
Thursday- broiled trout, baked sweet potatoes, sauteed veggies

Sweet potatoes and pumpkins are really abundant at the market right now but I’m still using up what I bought last week, so I resisted with great difficulty. I baked an excellent pumpkin bundt cake with the leftover baked pumpkin and sweet potato. I try to pack as much nutrition in cakes like this as possible since my kids eat it for breakfast and after-school snacks.

Vanilla-Cinnamon Pumpkin Bundt Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour, or multi-grain flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 c jaggery (unrefined palm sugar, can sub dark brown sugar)
1 c Florida Crystals sugar, regular or demerara
1 stick butter, softened
3 large eggs
1 1/2 c cooked pumpkin or sweet potato
1 cup sour cream, yogurt, buttermilk, or kefir (I used sour cream this time)
1 tbl vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 350. I will admit, I cheated because I couldn’t find one of the beaters for my mixer. I threw all of the wet ingredients and the sugar in the blender. It actually worked really well! Then I combined the dry ingredients just barely into the wet with a spatula and scraped it into a well-greased-and-floured bundt pan and baked it for an hour. Let this cake rest, covered tightly, for 24 hours if you can before slicing.

By: Andi Houston Category: Recipes!, Weekly Meal Plans, What's in the Basket? Tags: , , , , , ,