I’m growing lots of yummy edibles in the yard, as you’ve seen. I’m starting to think about cooking and preserving with them. In fact the salads above were picked from out yard! I’ve also frozen quite a few gallon bags of strawberries (cored) for smoothies.
I pulled out an unused calendar tonight and started writing dinner ideas on it. I didn’t look anything up special, I just used recipes (or vague ideas of things to make) that we always come back to. Here is what I have so far:
BBQ (Bj) 20
Pasta salad 15
Slow cooker 18
Pizza (we make) 18
Chicken & polenta 4
Aaron & Erin 8
Potato chowder 7
Tacos 13
Curry 10
Chili 12
Pot sticker soup 8
Tomato soup and cheese sandwiches 10
Pot pie 1
Veggie mulligatawny 2
Salmon chowder 2
Other Soup 16
Spaghetti 13
Enchiladas 7
Stir fry 9
Hawaiian 5
Salad 12
Chipotle pork 4
Gnocchi 7
Stuffed pumpkin 5
Eat out 12
Party (&holidays) 8
Left overs 44
This leaves 74 nights unaccounted for, more if we want less leftover nights (but I do find we use those, and will as long as the girls are too young to eat full servings). Of course this is an ideal world, we always eat out (or get take out home) way, way more than this. Ugh.
I would love more ideas specifically on summer time foods or foods I can make (or ingredients I can prep) to put up for later. I will hopefully have lots of lettuce, kale, cucumbers, peas, beans, carrots, radishes, Swiss chard, and fruit (strawberries, blueberries, marionberries, raspberries, plums, apples, Asian pears, and figs) to work with. Plus a few cabbages, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, peppers, onions and melons. I’m also thinking about what to plant next month to harvest through the fall into winter (and maybe even very early spring). Garlic is on my list! I just saw my friend pull up beautiful garlic from a bed she planted last fall, so cool. I should have artichokes in the spring too, those are growing well.
For lunches we do leftovers, muffin tin lunches, sandwiches and salads. I could probably use a few ideas in that department too!
Breakfast is usually one of these:
Parfait (yogurt, fruit and homemade granola)
Cereal (Tuesday; when she won’t eat anything else)
Oatmeal (pretty much every day in winter with canned peaches or pears mixed in)
Smoothies and toast
Bagels and cream cheese
And sometimes:
Eggs/veggie/hash brown scramble
Breakfast pie
Pancakes (Bj)
Muffins. Yes! I finally tried muffins, twice. Both times they were not so good. We ate them, but couldn’t finish either batch. Must figure out muffins.
So that’s how we eat in a year. Have you ever done long range meal planning? How do you decide what to put up in the summer? I’ve always just winged it, but 17 jars of corn relish and no more Italian sauce tell me it’s better to have a plan.

Oh the garden. How much it gives, and not just fruits, flowers and veggies! After a long couple of days with the girls an hour out there tonight was just what I needed.

I watered the things in pots (the rest is on drip, I’m trying deep watering this year vs. every day watering… So far so good).

I tasted lots of berries. These honey berries, lots of strawberries (I estimate we’ve picked 25 lbs from my patch so far), a tiny few raspberries, and a lone blueberry.

I picked little eggs off these things. A lot less gross than little larvae! I think it will be worth it though…. Baby cauliflower!

I planted more beans even though I have an insane number already (see below). I have this area seeded in poppies but I thought I might try bush beans mixed in. It might get too shady in the afternoon to work, we’ll see. I picked a seed, “not picky about it’s location.”

These scarlet runner beans have a more prime location, on a trellis Bj built. In front of them I’ve squeezed some onions (I’ve got them scattered about the yard), behind them some dill.

And this is a bean teepee of purple runners, passed around in my family for a while, we save the seed ourselves. We call them magic beans since they grow purple and turn green upon cooking.

I tucked away peppers and melons for the night. And fretted over my apple and pear trees… Should I put little covers over every fruit? Am I destined to get some yucky bug or disease since I chose not to spray?

Tucked in around the apple small miracles. After who knows what colonized some of my sprouting pumpkins seeds (what????) I still have two heathy starts, one semi healthy, and a maybe. I’ve not given up hope on eating more stuffed pumpkins this fall yet. But I will be looking for a few starts tomorrow at the market to supplement.

Delias are poking up here and in the front, which is good since three plantings of sunflower seeds have failed to produce the abundance we had last year (by shear luck I guess).

I marvel at this coreopsis. A merchant threw it in as a bonus, because it was so scrawny, and didn’t even know it’s color. Luckily it’s not pink, and fits in nicely with the other yellows I’m collecting. In fact, it might be my favorite.

Like I said I did manage to taste a few raspberries… But this bush tempts me with what is to come! And marionberries next to it scream to be made into a pie.

(Oh look, more beans)
And I cleaned up bathings suits, towels, gardening gloves, a sprinkler, cups, the cozy coup, buckets of weeds, and wound hoses. But I left these two, tucked away for the girls to find them tomorrow… Hopefully calmer not so screamy girls.
I don’t know if I’ll keep up the garden commentary through the summer. It’s easy on a night like this where all the pics were snapped with my phone. And this entry typed on my phone, while Bennie snuggles in, up again.
And how does your garden grow my friends?