A January Meal Plan

This meal plan is a bit out of our ordinary pattern and it’s mainly because we’re not at home.  We’ve been at my parent’s house—aka my childhood home—for the last two weeks, and will be here the rest of this week before we hit the road for Oregon and California.  More on that later, but for now I’ll just say a few things about what it’s like planning meals when we’re not at home.

Amazingly it has been beautiful here!  Those are the Olympic Mountains, looking out over the South Puget Sound

What pattern?

And going back to my comment about our ordinary pattern, our whole pattern has been off for the past 6 or 7 months really.  From June to December I was spending my afternoons at Maurita’s Kitchen, part of The Working Centre in downtown Kitchener.  I also started a small home-based business which made things busier as well.  Okay, actually I was posting a lot less here starting last March due to a certain arrival ….

I thought I could balance having a third child, working, and a blog but ultimately it was all a bit too much.  We continued meal planning, and have eaten very well in the last year.  There just wasn’t enough time or energy going around to document all of it.  So, days, weeks, months have passed and here the blog is, a little bit neglected.  But I think it’s okay in the end, because we’re happy with how things are.

Way more sun than we ever expected.  The big trees we were well aware of.

So I’ve essentially allowed the blog to fade into the background of my life while other aspects of my life—which ironically are much more local than a “local†food blog—took the centre.  It’s been great.  But soon, okay in like a bit less than three months, my wife will go back to work.  And I will again become full-time stay-at-home dad.  And maybe within that role I will once again feel the desire to blog on a more consistent basis.  Or not, we’ll see!

 Exploring McLane Creek , part of the Capital State Forest

In the meantime, we are enjoying a long holiday in Olympia.  Like until the end of this month kind of long.  And it has been wonderful to be here.  Having not been here in two years(!) I feel like I’m seeing the whole place with new eyes.  A big surprise for me has been noticing not just the moss that seems to grow everywhere, but the ferns!  There are actually ferns growing in trees here.  How did I never notice this in all my years living here?   Amazing.

 Yes, ferns growing on a tree. Â

Back to food.Â

It was a bit tricky planning a meal for the week when we didn’t know exactly what would be available at the Olympia Farmers Market , so we made a few assumptions and then went to see if we could find the ingredients we needed (mainly kale or hearty greens, beets, and apples.  My parents already had winter squash from their garden as well as some other things in their fridge and pantry).

Yeah so it was actually quite cold when we hit up the market.

Sadly there was no kale at the market.  We did find beets and ended up getting some beautiful carrots and a delicata squash.  We’ll have to decide if we hit the grocery store for some more veggies or modify the plan to fit what we found, but more or less this is what we’re shooting for this week.  We’ll probably start by going to Spud’s Produce Market , which is an awesome little store, exactly the kind of place we’d love to see in KW some day….

And Happy New Year, of course!  (And no, the sparklers aren’t local, I think that might be illegal, I’ll have to look into it…)

A Week of January Meals:

Monday	Mezze Monday (a “go all out” kind of meal): Lamb Tzatziki Pita Bread Cherry Tomato Salad Hummus
Tuesday	Polenta (as a pasta) – based on Oh She Glows’ Creamy Tomato Pasta Marinated Beet Salad (Alice Waters “The Art of Simple Food”)
Wednesday	One-dish Wednesday: Tortilla Lasagna
Thursday	Red Lentil Cauliflower Pita Chips (from leftover pita bread)
Friday	Orange Beef Udon Stew (to use up the fundraiser oranges, which obviously are not local) Lentil Apple Salad (from Simply in Season)