Our seven-year-old is one of the most sentimental people I know. She left her VBS bracelet on for two weeks until it rotted off because she "never wanted to forget the fun." She carried around a picture of her first school teacher and herself for the first week of summer vacation because she missed him so much. Everything and everyone holds such significance to her that when things change, it's tough. The apple doesn't seem to fall far from the tree. As I decided to stop posting weekly menu plans, I may or may not have gotten a little nostalgic. It's crazy, I know. Most folks dread menu planning. It had become a weekly ritual for me, though. With a nice cuppa, some dearly loved (and warn out) cookbooks, grocery shopping lists, the weekly produce box contents list, and bookmarked blog recipes, I'd set up my little menu planning station and settle in. I really quite enjoyed it.
Now that we grow about 90% of our own produce (our fruit trees are still too immature to bare fruit so we have to supplement there), I let the inspiration from the garden compose the plan. Bits of whatever we are able to harvest in the morning ends up in lunch and dinner. Some of what we pull during the evening garden sesh is found in our breakfasts the next day. The garden, paired with a little bit of Kitchen Wisdom (and years of menu planning using seasonal produce from the produce box) has become my new rhythm for food prep. I am loving it! Unlike my daughter, I do love change, most of the time. It keeps things fresh and interesting and there's always something new to learn.
If you are looking for seasonal menu plans and recipes, there is a collection of over a year's worth of menu plans with recipes links from all over the internet, here on the blog. I still reference them frequently and hope they might be of some help to you when that inevitable food rut rears it's boring head.
Plans to better organize all of my personal recipes is also underway. I am hoping to list them into seasons, dish categories, and specific diet needs. As life twists and turns, the blog dances along with it. I think that's what I like about blogs; watching how people change and grow and with it, what they choose to write about. Sometimes, lots of times, change is good.
