Meal Planning and Gardening Update

In my last post I wrote about my Fall garden plans. I got seeds started and some little sprouts already! I planted the seeds in salad containers on Tuesday and by Friday I had little sprouts. I’ve been leaving the lids on but once the seedlings get bigger, I’ll have to open the containers and hope the squirrels don’t bury their acorns in my seedling containers.

I planted 15 bush beans outside along with carrots in the grow bag. Not together, but the bush beans are in the containers with my tomatoes so when they are gone, I’ll already have something growing and producing. The carrots are in a 30 gallon (?) grow bag.

I ordered one more gardening book since my last post – The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible and oh em gee is that book packed with information! I’m glad for all those photos, too.

Here’s my indoor seedling setup:

I bought the Aerogarden light (#notsponsored) and I’m using retired plastic food storage containers and a couple containers I filched from the recyling bin. There’s 2 more bush beans, kohlrabi, romanesco, cauliflower, and snapdragons. That’s about all I can do with seedlings for now… just water and wait.

So then I moved on to meal planning! My intent was to sit down and come up with some different meal options for the week, but once I dragged out these cookbooks, I ended up writing down every recipe I’d like to make for the Fall. We aren’t going out for groceries (I never thought I’d miss just going to all the different grocery stores for this and that) and we’re mostly eating produce that we can get from the CSA and what we can grow ourselves. This means what is local and seasonal. Some nights we have roasted veg from the CSA, along with a few okra and beans from the yard.

We have had good luck ordering some produce from Amazon Fresh. A few mangoes and kiwi and such.

A couple of these aren’t vegan, but I can either skip the non-vegan recipes or veganize them. Same with gluten-free, I can just degluten a recipe most of the time. I went through 4 other cookbooks, not pictured, and culled them from my shelves. What are your favorite vegan cookbooks that are gluten-free-friendly? A lot of the ones I looked at looked amazing but I didn’t know if they would work with gluten-free flours. I need all the ideas because we’re not eating take-out, so meal-planning and preparation is all on me.

Here’s my notebook with all of my Fall food ideas:

A lot of these recipes we’ve tried and liked and so many more that I’ve been wanting to try forever.

I had meant to check out my Pinterest page and write down ideas from there as well, but that felt like a whole project on its own. I have a board of recipes I’d like to try and then there’s my Ate That board where I pin all the recipes that were successes. Some of them aren’t vegan, but can be veganized using TVP, tofu, tempeh, or soy curls. Are you on Pinterest? So many great ideas on there! And some not great recipes, if we’re being honest…

Oh! And before I even attacked this stack of cookbooks, I ordered 3 more from Amazon. (This is why I had to get rid of a few, because I need the space on the shelves.) I got America’s Test Kitchen Vegan for Everybody, Homemade Vegan Pantry, and The First Mess. Actually, as I’ve been writing this post, I’m pretty sure the Amazon delivery person just left these on my front porch… so, gotta go!