Everyday Life for Four Seasons

Blueberry season is here, my favorite time of year. My mother was here for the weekend and we picked almost 10 pounds at a local farm. Today I'll be making the blueberry-basil jam I tried last year for the first time.

This is also the time of year when I start feeling swamped with produce, so I set down a few rules to follow as I plan out meals.

Jillian's Rules for Summer Meal Planning

* Basil makes great pesto. Make a lot of it, then freeze it. Use pesto as a main ingredient in summer dishes no more than once a week, preferably less. Save it for the winter, when that fresh taste is not only welcomed, but greatly needed. Use fresh summer basil to accent the other flavors in a dish.

* There are so many types of produce available in the summer. Make tried and true favorites a few nights a week, and experiment with new recipes the rest of the time.

* Don't let vegetables go to waste. Turn extra veggies into veggie burgers or pizza toppings, or cook, puree and freeze them for use in muffins or sauces in the winter. (I like to do this with summer squash and beets)

* Experiment with new salad recipes.

Now onto meal planning for the week. I've got:

Beets
Beet Greens
Turnips
Lettuce
Pac Choi
Red Potatoes
Swiss Chard
Kohlrabi
Garlic Scapes
Cucumbers
Purslane

Recipes I'll try:

A Middle Eastern menu, including Liz's Garlic Scape Tzatsiki, pita bread, Israeli couscous, chickpeas and purslane.

Sarah's White Pizza, using turnips and swiss chard or beet greens, with a Pac Choi salad on the side.

Frittata with swiss chard and red potatoes.

Summer is here... how can I tell? My desire to cook is kicking in. I worked at the farmer's market on Saturday and the Kilpatrick Family Farm stand was jam packed with so many different kinds of exciting vegetables. I wanted to buy them all and cook them up. In my mind, everything had the potential to be turned into a delicious meal. But I have so many vegetables in my kitchen from my weekly CSA box and I just can't justify getting any more. I stood there selling those wonderful vegetables, thinking about all the meals I could whip up, and wished I could spend a week cooking.

It feels sooo good to get some zip back in my step.

The only problem with the desire to cook again is that I want to make flavorful dishes with interesting ingredients and my children don't feel as excited about that as I do. So, what am I going to feed my children this week?

Monday
Jeff and me: Linguine with grilled fennel and sun-dried tomatoes, salad
'A': pasta with olive oil and a vegetable
'H': hot dog with a vegetable

Tuesday
Jeff and me: Chickpea spinach stew (in addition to some other goodies - that's our contribution to a potluck dinner we're attending)
'A' & 'H': roasted chickpeas, carrots

Wednesday
Jeff and me: Garlicky white bean puree with sauteed beet greens, salad with roasted beets, goat cheese and walnuts
'A' & 'H': Middle Eastern stuffed lentil bread (if they like it and it's easy to make, it'll become a staple in our house)

Thursday
Everyone: Coconut soynut butter & banana stuffed vegan french toast

Friday
?

While I cook this week, Jeff will be preparing the gazebo for screens and a screen door. Finally we're undertaking this project to screen in the porch! I love our home and our backyard and the only thing that's missing is a place to sit outdoors in the evening without the threat of being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration. You know what I mean.

Jeff has never done a project like this before, so after he took apart the existing railing and got the gazebo down to bare studs, we called my stepfather for help. Dick is a very handy person and we knew he would know just what to do next. We were lucky that he and mom could make the trip over this past weekend. Jeff now has "homework" to do to prepare the gazebo for their next trip - in 2 weeks - when they'll hang the door and finish up the screening. And then we'll all sit down inside and enjoy it!

Until then, my favorite late afternoon relaxation spot has been taken over by lumber and boxes of nails.

Now that our CSA share has started up for the summer, I'm having trouble planning meals for the week. I like to plan my meals on Monday, but I pick up my vegetables on Wednesday, and I don't know what I'll receive until that day when I actually get my box. This makes meal planning a bit challenging. I could switch to meal planning on Wednesday nights or Thursday mornings, but it goes against my way of doing things, so I won't.

I know what I would like to serve all week - PASTA. These antibiotics are really hurting my stomach and I find that taking them with pasta helps a lot. Truthfully though, there are only so many dinners in a row that I can serve pasta and still be excited about it. So here we go:

Monday:
Jeff and me: tilapia, asparagus, roasted red potatoes
'A': Sliced Turkey, pita chips, asparagus, a bite of tilapia
'H': Hot dogs, pita chips, roasted red potatoes, asparagus, a bite of tilapia

Tuesday:
Jeff and me: vegan Hoppin' John with collard greens
'A' & 'H': Hopefully vegan Hoppin' John

Wednesday:
Jeff and me: Chickpea Tacos
'A' & 'H': Hopefully Chickpea Tacos

Thursday:
Jeff and me: Salad Pizza
'A': Pizza with hummus and carrots
'H': Pizza with tomato sauce and cheese

Meal planning gets more and more challenging as time goes on. What do other parents feed their children?

Seeing how the meals I planned last week didn't go over well with my family (new dishes are tough on the girls), I'm opting for tried and true favorites this week.

Monday:
Jeff and Me: Pecan Mushroom Veggie Burgers on salad
'A': Pasta with olive oil and broccoli
'H': Peanut butter with blueberry jam and crackers, broccoli

Tuesday:
Jeff and Me: Salad pizza (my all time favorite meal. I make a crust with tomato sauce and top it with a greek salad.)
'A': Pizza crust with hummus, broccoli
'H': Cheese pizza, broccoli

Wednesday:
Jeff and Me: Stir fry with brown rice, chinese cabbage, mushrooms, green garlic, broccoli, and carrots. Tofu or shrimp? Hopefully I'll have enough pac choi from my garden to make a hearty salad as a side dish
'A': Brown rice, cooked carrots and roasted chickpeas
'H': Roasted chickpeas, raw carrots and cooked mushrooms

Thursday:
Jeff, Me and 'H': Zucchini burgers on a bun with sweet potato baked fries and a salad
'A': Mashed sweet potatoes, rice from last night, and ...?

Friday:
Who knows?


I'm still figuring out meal options for 'A' now that we're omitting corn, sesame, cumin and peas. I'll say it again - corn is in everything it seems, and omitting it from her diet is hard. She used to eat pizza crust with tofutti cream cheese (gross, I know, but way better than the soy cheese alternative in my opinion). Tofutti products contain corn, so I don't purchase them anymore. I gently switched 'A' over to hummus on her pizza instead of cream cheese. I had to come up with a new hummus recipe and so far she thinks it's delicious.

Hummus for someone who is allergic to tahini and cumin

Add to the food processor:

Chickpeas (I generally use canned chickpeas. The organic cans don't contain BHT, a chemical that Goya adds to their canned chickpeas.)

Some garlic (a clove or two?)

Some lemon juice (1/4 cup? the juice of one lemon maybe)

Salt (a pinch)

Sunflower butter: start by adding a teaspoon, blending it in, and seeing how it tastes. The Sunflower butter acts like tahini, thickening up the hummus and adding an earthy depth.

Blend and taste. Voila! You have hummus. Sort of.

I'm sitting down to plan out meals for our family for the upcoming week. I can't tell you what a challenge this has become as my children have gotten older and their preferences have changed. Not to mention the new corn and pea allergy diagnosis for 'A'. I know you don't want to hear my whining, so I'll keep it to a minimum. I'll just outline what the parameters are so you'll have an idea of what I'm dealing with.

For 'A':
No dairy, eggs, sesame, nuts, corn, peas or cumin [allergies]
Taste freakouts happen over: tomatoes, black beans, tofu, anything that resembles sauce or a dip, salad, peppers, veggie burgers
LOVES: pasta with olive oil, hummus, chickpeas, rice, edamame, couscous

For 'H':
Taste freakouts: pasta, hummus, couscous
LOVES: tomatoes, beans, pizza, edamame, salad, peppers, veggie burgers, sauces and dips

Let's take a quick moment to compare lists. Yup, it's true, a lot of the things 'A' LOVES, 'H' doesn't care for, and vice versa. My goodness. Add an increasing list of allergens to the mix and I am left with a lot of frustration and very little inspiration.

The whining is done. Here's my list of meals for the week - all of these are new recipes for us. Will they like them? Will I end up feeling defeated that I put time and effort into these new recipes and they weren't well received? Or will the girls give them thumbs up?

I'm taking these recipes from two cookbooks, "Vive le Vegan! Simple, Delectable Recipes for the Everyday Vegan Family," by Dreena Burton and "Vegan Lunch Box Around the World" by Jennifer McCann.

Pureed Chickpea Pasta Sauce with Fresh Herbs over... what kind of pasta? 'H' will ONLY eat pasta that looks like spaghetti but is cut into short pieces. So I guess I'll serve it over the cut spaghetti. I'll serve this with a green vegetable, like asparagus (which we have locally now), green beans (which aren't local) or broccoli (not local either).

Rosemary Seasoned Tofu Balls - according to the recipe, this is kind of like a meatball, which you would serve with red sauce over pasta. But since one of my children doesn't like sauce and the other one doesn't care for much pasta, I'm going to serve these plain with vegan scalloped potatoes and a green vegetable.

Sunflower Lentil Pie. Mmmm, with lentils, sunflower seeds, and celery, this sounds like pure comfort food! I'll serve this with yet another green vegetable.

Chik'n Pot Pie: This is the meatiest vegan pot pie recipe I've ever tried: seitan, veggies and potatoes cooked into a delectable pie crust.

Roasted Red Pepper Cannellini Bean Sauce over cut spaghetti. With [yawn...] another green vegetable.

I'll let you know how these dishes are received... keep your fingers crossed!