Meal Plan 7/31

It’s just about August.  How can that be?

This week is pretty light on the external commitments, which is good.  But the garden is starting to produce more and more, berry picking season locally is in full swing and the kiddos are out of summer camp and in my hair!

This is what I have to think about for the week.

1. Our bizarrely hot spell seems to be over.  Now we are in a much more reasonable range-mid 80’s or so-most days.  That makes cooking at home a bit easier.  When it was in the 90’s every day just the thought of adding any heat to our un-airconditioned home was enough to make me cringe.  You can see why some folks had a “summer kitchen” (aka cooked in a shed or outdoors) back in the old days.

2. Yankee Bill is back from drill!  Ya!  I miss him when he’s gone and tend to sleep terribly.  I guess it’s just too quiet without his snoring (heck-you get used to a lot of things in 12 years).  He does have pool and meetings on Wed & Thurs, so those nights either he won’t be with us for dinner or else dinner will have to be ready early.

3. I don’t have any plans to head into town for errands this week that will put a crimp on my cooking timeline.  I do want to get to a local place to pick blueberries to can and attempt to dehydrate, but that’s just “up the road a piece”.

4.  In the fridge I have beets from the garden that I cooked a few days ago, some cucumbers from my brother’s garden that I’ve been marinating for “quick pickles”, some kohlrabi leaves, an eggplant that Buddy convinced me to buy at the produce stand and some fish that I cooked and picked off the bones (about 3/4 C).  Oh and yesterday when I was pressure canning 2 cans of the chicken broke open (which was a first).  The bottoms of the jar broke straight off without any shards or small pieces, so I was able to fish out the fully cooked chicken (it was still in the shape of the jar! It didn’t shear off till I tried to take them out).  That’s fully cooked and in the fridge too.

5. The garden continues to grow.  I’ve got beets, cabbage, broccoli side shoots, one each mizuna and chard plants, plenty of rat tail radish pods and zucchini coming in right now.  The beans are going to start flowering & producing in the next week or so (although that won’t affect my meal plans for a little bit).  My zuchetta tromboncino squash has a bunch of babies, the tomatoes are full of hard green fruits, and the first planting of carrots is starting to fill out.

6. As always my goal is to have one venison meal, one fish meal, one bean meal, one meatless meal and one soup meal per week.

Taking all that into account here is my game plan:

Monday: Chicken Salad Sandwiches with Pickles and Marinated beets

I mixed the cooked chicken with mayo, homemade relish, mustard etc and made a nice chicken salad that I served on plain old white bread.  I had sliced and marinated some cucumbers in a pickle brine in the fridge a few days ago so we ate those on the side (yum!) along with some boiled beets tossed in a homemade vinaigrette.

Tuesday: Chicken Vegetable Crepes with Rice

Princess has been wanting to try making this meal for a few weeks.  This afternoon we have enough time for me to let her do all the cooking while I can be available to assist her.  We will use some garden fresh veggies for the vegetable portion, and make blender crepes for the crepes!

Wednesday: Grilled Pork Chops, Grilled Eggplant and Crockpot Baked Potatoes

Did I ever mention that I bought a 1/2 pig last year? Well, I should be picking up this year’s pork some time later this week-and I’ve still got pork left from last year!  I guess I need to do better about using it regularly. . . sounds like a new meal plan goal!

Anyway, I’ll cook up some chops on the grill along with a peeled, sliced & marinated eggplant.  I wanted to do baked potatoes but didn’t want to use the oven, so I’m going to try a technique I’ve read about-baking them in the crockpot!  I’ll bake up extras that can be used next week for hash or potato salad.

Thursday: Fish Alfredo over Pasta with Beets and Greens.

I’ll make my mock Alfredo recipe and add the flaked cooked fish into it, then serve it over pasta.   I’ll pick and cook some more of the beets-the roots and then as a separate dish the beet greens!

This is my fish meal for the week.

Friday: Grilled Pizza

We haven’t made our own pizza for a few weeks, and we haven’t done it on the grill at all yet this year!  So we’ll keep the house cool and enjoy our pizza 🙂  We mostly do cheese pizza (using the pizza hut crust clone recipe of course) so I’ll consider this to be my meatless meal for the week.

Saturday: Vension Chili and Cornbread

I know, I know.  Chili doesn’t exactly scream “summer”.  But I needed to fit in a bean and a venison meal this week, and although we don’t have anything specific planned for Saturday (for once!) it tends to be the kind of day that we get all busy then suddenly realize that it’s suppertime.  So a crockpot meal like chili seems like a good idea-it will be ready whenever we want to eat.

This is my venison meal and my bean meal for the week.

Sunday:  Chicken Vegetable Soup & Biscuits

Chicken thighs are on sale locally-so I wanted to pick up and freeze some.  I’ll cook a few and then make chicken vegetable soup.  Quick biscuits can go on the side.

This is my soup meal for the week.

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Are you interested in learning more about menu planning? Check out my post “Why Plan a Weekly Menu” .