Beyond my Back Yard

I'll start by saying after a full morning of taking care of everyone else's needs I'm so happy to be sitting down for a few moments to write. Ah... I relish this first hour of the afternoon.

I feel Friday's Flowers drawing to a close. Participation has dropped off in past weeks, summer vacations and other priorities no doubt, and my own inspiration in this area is waning. Fresh flowers are still coming into my home each week but my creative energies are being spent elsewhere and taking photos of flowers seems like a chore. Can't have that now can we?

This will be the second last week and next Friday will be the last time (at least this summer) that I host Friday's Flowers. After which I will draw a name from everyone who has participated since the last drawing and send the winner a bar of my summer soap.

Thanks for you joining along. It's been fun meeting you all.

We're going backpacking this weekend so this week's flower photo is a bit contrived (I don't usually put flowers next to the packing box!) to give you a little picture of what getting ready looks like. I won't lie, getting ready for such an undertaking is a lot of work. But we get better at it each time.

This week we've worked hard in the evenings - all of us - so the packing, which is mostly food prep, doesn't affect my daily routine with the kids, something I find really difficult. It's so hard to regularly (we do this once a month) fit in packing with my full time job of feeding our family, homeschooling and doing all the usual summer stuff like weekly swimming trips, farm visits, berry picking and a little gardening. 

my backyard sunflowers towering over the garden path

I think we're improving at getting ready for a weekend of backpacking. The fact that I haven't experienced any stress this time around is an indication that we might be on to something.

This has been a golden summer. Warm and sunny with thunderstorms every once in a while to bring the needed rain.

We're doing our best to make the most of these beautiful days. To live summer and enjoy summer. Even when it means full days of school/crafting, work, swimming, meals and then packing before bed. Because making the effort to go to the woods, with a pack on your back, to camp at a pond and walk along streams is worth it. 

How are you making the most of your summer?

~~~

Welcome to Friday's Flowers! If you're just visiting today and want to know what's going on please read this post. Use the linky feature below to share your bouquet blossoms.

Pick some flowers, arrange 'em pretty, take a photo, post it to your blog, link to Friday's Flowers and share it with us. 

This is our sixth summer as share members at a local csa farm. Our farmer was one of the first in Maine to do this type of farming and has been at it for over 20 years. Here is where you can read all about our years as members.

Brienne loves the farm tire swing

CSAs are all the rage now-a-days (with good reason). Here's a few articles I've come across in just the past month Understanding CSA's and Their Benefits, Loving My CSA: Learning to eat a Variety of Seasonal Produce, CSA: Community Supported Agriculture and Your Local CSA: 3 Reasons to Join. Do you have a csa post to recommend? Please leave a link in comments.

Different farms operate pick ups with their own unique twists but one thing vegatable csa farms have in common is produce offered according to season. For example in Maine we don't get tomatoes, peppers or melons in early July but do get peas, lettuce, chard and lots of other goodies.

During the summer months our farm prepares boxes each week with a variety of just-harvested produce. Members don't get to pick and choose what they take home. 

this is exactly the color of the chard,
no photo editing, it's called "Bright Lights" for a reason!

Learning to cook according to the local, seasonal harvest is challenging. I'll say right now we don't only eat locally produced food. We would have a very limited diet if we did. This makes me feel less-than-granola/crunchy (we don't eat only organic either by the way) at times and definitely out of touch with the hip locovore movement. But we are committed to a mostly plant based diet and if we were to eat only local we'd be eating either a lot of meat or a lot of cabbage and as it is we eat cabbage, of one sort or another, several times a week!

Most of our vegetables this time of the year come from the farm and some from the farmers market but we still buy out of state fruits and veggies from a favorite produce stand. Having got that non-locovore confession out of the way I feel I can proceed with telling you how I menu plan for summer's seasonal veggies.

Menu Planning Basics

My basic meal planning strategy, regardless the time year is to plan our supper meals around main vegetables, beans or starches and fill in the spaces with other vegetables, beans and starches.

I am not a gourmet chef but I have been cooking whole food, vegan meals for several years now and can, with a certain amount of ease, whip up tasty meals from our bulk beans, grains, a few condiments and whatever veggies happen to be in the fridge.

Normal Menu Planning:

1. Read recipes, choose what to make and write out a menu. Check your fridge, freezer and pantry to use up things on hand.
2. Make a grocery list from your menu.
3. Buy groceries.
4. Cook the meals.

CSA Menu Planning:

1. Pick up veggies from farm. While you're there feed the chickens, pet the goats, chat with other members. Ohh & ahh at the gorgeous vegetables and be so thankful for your farmer who grew it for you.
2. Come home and figure out what the heck you're going to do with all this wierd stuff. Beet greens? Garlic scapes? Daikon? Parsnips?

For most months of the year I use a modified version of the straight forward menu-list-groceries-cook planning strategy. I buy lots in bulk from buying clubs so I can often skip step 3 and "shop" from our bulk supplies, however I do buy copious amounts of fresh produce each week. But for these next four months I shift into csa menu planning mode which in years past has left me feeling a little frazzled.

A Weekly Menu Plan

This year I finally decided to make the unknown (exactly what veggies will I be getting this week) a little bit easier by determining a set menu plan each week that I just "plug" the vegetables into.

Monday:  Pasta. This is my recovery day from our busy weekends. I used to do a lot of meal and house work this day but we recently made Monday a crash day which looks something like this. Pasta is the main thing for the supper meal with the addition of maybe beans and whatever veggies are on hand or from the freezer. One example is empty fridge pasta. Other ideas are pasta salad, pasta primavera, pasta with greens or thai peanut sauce noodles with shredded cabbage and carrots.

Tuesday:  Potatoes. This is similar to pasta night but with potatoes as the base. I have mixed most any veggie (except lettuce) with potatoes. On colder nights we might have mashed taters with cabbage or other such greens (kale, collards). Hot days we eat cold potato and vegetable salads with lemon tahini dressings and sliced olives. Another option is baked potatoes with bean, tomato & veggie toppings.

Wednesday: Soup, Casserole, Patties or Wraps. Tuesday and Wednesday I have some time to pull together something nicer for Wednesday supper. We eat a lot of easy, one pot meals but this is the night I make an effort to prepare a nice one pot meal. If I'm running short on time I can pull together a hearty veggie soup with my eyes closed, otherwise I might take extra time and make veggie patties which are like burger patties only filled with healthy grains, seeds, vegetables and/or beans. Another favorite is brown rice or whole grain corn tortillas with toppings.

Thursday:  Beans. We eat a lot of beans at our house. Our kids have been eating them for years and don't think anything of eating a bowl of beans, with some veggies of course, for supper. Thursday is our farm day. I cook a large pot of beans earlier in the day and then add fresh veggies from the farm pick up. Alternately, if it's cooler day we might have baked beans with sauteed garlic greens.

Friday: Stir fry & Rice. Each season provides interesting veggies for stir fry and during the summer season this is definitely true. This could be asian inspired or it might take on a mexican cumin/salsa flavor depending on the veggies. Making stir fries with fresh picked greens is especially delightful.

Saturday & Sunday: I don't plan too much in advance. After hiking we almost always eat out or maybe have easy pizza at home. The other night I'll ask the family for ideas or try to use up something in the fridge.

A Sample Menu

Last week's farm pick up we received chinese cabbage, carrots (thinnings), garlic scapes, lettuce, parsley, shell peas, snap peas, scallions, swiss chard and pyo herbs. This is a sample menu, roughly based on what my family ate this past week, showing how you could use these seasonal veggies. Our pick up day is Thursday so my menu plan starts that day.

• Thursday - Garbanzo Bean Pesto Salad. Veggies used: shell peas, garlic scapes, parsley, scallions and pyo basil.
• Friday - Chinese Cabbage Stir Fry. Veggies used: chinese cabbage, garlic scapes, snap peas and scallions
• Saturday - Wraps with fresh veggies, marinated tofu, beans and salsa. Veggies used: lettuce, scallions
• Sunday - Supper out
• Monday - Sesame Noodles w/ Garbanzo Bean. Veggies used: chinese cabbage, peas, garlic scapes, scallions
• Tuesday - Swiss Chard Potato Salad. Veggies used: carrots, parsley, swiss chard
• Wednesday - Vegetable & Tofu Lasagna, loosely based on this recipe. Veggies used: none from the farm but kale from our garden.

To each of these meals I often added other out of season vegetables, ie: tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, avocado etc.. The lettuce was eaten for lunches in our salads as were any veggies that didn't get cooked for supper. Peas were also eaten as snacks. 

How do you menu plan around seasonal veggies?

Weekends like this start innocently enough. An e-mail sent from a local organic farmer and friend, private invitation only, "the strawberries are ready for picking." It came in my inbox while we were on vacation so the picking had to wait till we got home. And it had to wait till Damien could help (I intended to pick a lot) and I had time to freeze what we picked.

It was decided, Friday was the day.

Then late last week another invitation, this time from Damien's coworker and friend, "our backyard raspberries are ripe and we'll be out of town for the weekend, please help yourself." Only these berries were both free and a mere 5 minute walk down the street.

Free berries cannot be passed up.

And so the weekend played out something like this:

Friday

6:30 am Get up and get the girls out of bed. We're going strawberry picking. I baked muffins the night before to eat while working.

7:30 am The four of us are in the patch. Unfortunately the humidity that hit during our vacation "killed" a good number of berries. There's a lot of rotten and moldy ones, as there was in my home patch when we returned from our trip. But we're determined and thorough. By midmorning we've picked 27 lbs, 1/2 of what I had hoped to pick - these organic berries are small but good.

1:30 pm One bucket cleaned and in the freezer. Four to go. We've also made a run to the craft store for magnetic sheets, Celine has a craft in mind.

4:30 pm After the usual afternoon activities of reading and my writing time I'm washing and freezing another bucket. Brienne is sorely disappointed I don't have time to sew her the sundress we bought fabric for the night before, but there is only so much a mama can do in a day!

5:00 pm I pick our backyard raspberries. So thankful that it's family night at the college, cheap eats (& even healthy options) for supper.

7:00 pm We're home again and before we settle down to watch Alice in Wonderland with the girls I move frozen strawberries from cookie sheets to gallon sized plastic freezer bags.

Saturday

9:30 am We slept in. Delicious. Almost as delicious as the fresh berry smoothie Damien makes us for breakfast.

The specific details of this day are hard to recall but I spend most of it in the kitchen: washing, freezing and bagging the rest of the strawberries (15 lbs worth), preparing the day's meals and making skin care products. It was a good day. Damien works on the house, the girls play and participate in our work.

5:30 pm The girls and I walk down the street to Damien's friend and coworker's house. He wasn't joking, there are a lot of ripe raspberries. I'm in berry heaven. We pick 4 lbs in 1/2 an hour, not bad.

7:30 pm We eat berries for dessert, again (smile). The evening is spent getting ready for tomorrow's hike.

9:30 pm The last raspberries are spread on a cookie sheet and placed in the freezer. The juice stained picking buckets and sticky kitchen counters are cleaned, one last time. Kitchen closed.

Sunday

7:00 am Frozen raspberries come off the cookie sheet and into a plastic freezer bag. We eat Damien's breakfast muesli with fresh raspberries.

8:30 am We're on the road, driving to the mountains for our weekly hike.

When we arrived I think I saw wild raspberries in the parking lot at the trailhead. Just this once I resisted the urge to investigate.

7:00 pm After a supper of frozen Newman's Own pizzas from the grocery store (we hadn't anticipated the Thai restaurant we eat at after hikes to be closed on July 4th - silly us) I'm off again to the neighbors to pick raspberries. I'm by myself this time. I appreciate the quiet. In that prickly patch I ponder my "berry picking heritage". Grandparents, both sets, who could outpick anyone. I think of my mom who also planned to pick berries this weekend at her home in Nova Scotia. I recall being a teenager on vacation with my parents and grumbling about stopping to pick berries for an hour on our way to the cabin. That I ever complained about berry picking amazes me but gives me hope for my own children that some day they too will come around to the joy of picking. 

8:30 pm One more cookie sheet of raspberries (complete with microscopic bugs, you can't really wash raspberries) in the freezer and we're out the door to watch the city fireworks show down by the river.

10:30 pm Home from the fireworks. Damien blends himself a water and raspberry juice in the vitamix. A refreshing drink on this warm summer night.

Monday

8:30 am I'm making waffles topped with raspberries for breakfast, a holiday request from the girls. More frozen raspberries are being transferred from the cookie sheet to a plastic freezer bag.

9:30 am In the garden taking photos of our raspberries. No time to pick though I've got some writing to do.

2:00 pm After a salad of farm greens and peas for lunch the girls and I are off to the local pond for an afternoon of swimming on this holiday Monday. The beach is busy but not crowded, the day is hot, the water is clean and refreshing. It's perfect.

6:30 pm We've eaten supper and I'm in our backyard picking raspberries while Damien makes berry smoothies for dessert. I pick almost 2 lbs and we're set again for breakfast and a few more to freeze. While I'm picking our neighbor, Damien's coworker whose yard I've visited twice this weekend, stops by on a walk with his family. "Hey listen" he says "now that we're home there's still more berries in our backyard then we're able to pick. You're welcome to them."

9:00 pm I make Tuesday's plan. First off, raspberry muffins for breakfast and then I figure out where to squeeze another 1/2 hour of berry picking into an already full day of sewing, a bit of school, picking up a couchsurfer to stay for a couple days and the usual meals and laundry. But berries for the picking, how can I say no?

It was a wonderful long summer weekend. We hiked and swam, ate from our farm share (and the grocer's freezer), watched a movie and fireworks. We spent time with the girls in the outdoors and at home. And through it all we relished berries. We picked berries, I froze berries, we ate berries. We lived berries.

Does summer get any better?