Menu Plan for the Dog Days of Summer

{strawberry lemonade in June}

It finally got “hot” here and by hot I mean 90 degrees. Ok you can stop laughing at me now, all you southerners. I’m practically from Canada ;).

To be honest the boys and I don’t function well in the heat. I can get up at five and work until noon, but after that it’s probably best for everyone if we are either outside in the shade or sitting near a fan. So to turn on an oven or spend a lot of time over a stove seems out of the question.

Plus right now a lot of my kitchen time is taken up with canning, dehydrating, and preparing all of the foods for those two processes. So by the time dinner rolls around, menu plan or not, it is best if it requires only stove top cooking, uses up lots of csa veggies and provides lots of leftovers. Here is what I have come up with.

Monday

• dinner: taco salad with crock pot pinto beans, grass-fed ground beef, shredded cheese, homemade salsa
  
• prep: soak lentils, make raw milk yogurt starter, can pickle slices

Tuesday

• dinner: tangy green beans with bacon and onions, squash fritters, leftover beef, corn on the cob
• prep: prep squash fritters in morning, finish sprouting lentils, dehydrate sage

Wednesday

• dinner: sprouted lentil salad with feta, cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes, basil, red onion and garlic vinaigrette
• prep: make raw milk yogurt, slice & dehydrate peaches, pick up milk and veggies from farm

Thursday

• dinner: salmon cakes with lemon-caper butter, big salad
• prep: make double batch of salmon cakes, prep coconut milk ice cream custard

Friday

• dinner: chicken roasted in the crock pot with csa veggies, salad, coconut milk ice cream
• prep: start chicken in the morning, freeze ice cream by hand in the afternoon

For hundreds of menus visit Laura.