Having a Plan

The only way to make it through these summer months with their piles and piles of vegetables is to have a plan. For me, the weeks that end with sad unused veggies in the trash are almost always the weeks that I didn't sit down the day I picked up my vegetables to figure out exactly what I was going to cook.

Every week before I hop on the bus to JP to pick up my CSA box I do a quick inventory of what's left in my refrigerator. This week it was a bundle of kale, a couple of cucumbers, and some beets. Pulling all those veggies out of the fridge is also a great time to do a little cleaning - if you clean out all those little vegetable bits and wipe the condensation off of your vegetable drawers regularly, your vegetables will stay happy and fresh longer!

Once I get home with my vegetable haul the real planning starts. This week my box was full of blueberries, peaches, kale, cucumbers, summer squash, red leaf lettuce, mesclun mix, beets, green beans, potatoes, arugula, and corn. Yum!

I try to start my weekly menu planning by prioritizing any leftover veggies from the previous week - get those out of the way quick! Then I choose a few recipes for large meals that will leave leftovers for lunch, decide what will be prepped to store for the winter, and leave a few things out for quick meals, snacking, and salads. This week I knew I wanted to make some easily freezable kale and arugula pesto, and I also decided to roast and freeze my growing pile of beets. And it's going to be another hot one, so a nice big jug of lemon cucumber water in the fridge will be welcome. So that takes care of last week's leftovers plus a little bit of this week's pile. And there are some things that obviously go into the salads and snacking piles - peaches, berries, lettuce, and mesclun mix, I'm looking at you! 

Washed and ready to go in my tummy!

Washing your lettuce right away, drying out your salad spinner and lining it with paper towels, and just throwing the whole thing full of greens into the fridge is a great way to keep your salad greens fresh and make it easy to put together a quick salad anytime. Anything like this that you can prep at the beginning of the week is one less thing you'll have to worry about later!

I know that I'll have NO PROBLEM coming up with quick and easy meals for the corn and green beans, so I decided to do my meal planning with the summer squash, potatoes, and the alarming large pile of cucumbers. There are a couple of things to keep in mind while you plan your meals - your grocery shopping and your cooking methods. Since I already know that I'll be turning on the oven to roast some beets, I might consider a recipe that needs some roasted vegetables - might as well get plenty of use out of that hot oven and hopefully only have to turn it on once this week. And since I know I'll be buying walnuts for the kale and arugula pesto, I might consider other recipes that will use walnuts. 

I settled on a couple of tasty looking grilled summer pizzas and a lemony, minty bulgur salad with lots of cucumbers in it. And since I've got it all planned out, hopefully I'll just need one trip to the grocery store and just a few solid cooking nights to get me through the week. Now lets see how much of this plan actually gets done before the next pile of veggies shows up next Saturday. Wish me luck!