Dinner Plans: Week 20 - Cooking With Our CSA

It’s Week 20 of Dinner Plans and this week we're kicking off the summer grilling season with a delicious bean recipe!

Jerry and our oldest are traveling to see Jerry's parents in Lodi, CA this Memorial Day Weekend. In this season, I'm appreciating way they can spend father-son time together and my youngest and I get our mother-daughter time. Capitalizing on that time, we skipped our CSA delivery this week but we're stretching the last of the previous delivery. This is one of those weeks where we can stretch a box over two to three weeks. We've got freezer pestos, broccoli, prepared mirepoix, and some leftover Easter ham I defrosted. It's a week where I'm grateful for a stocked pantry and freezer.

Meal Prepping on a Budget

I'm working on a blog post series about budget friendly meals while subscribing to a CSA. We've got a few tools and tips for preparing nourishing meals while keeping track of our grocery budget. As of now, for our family of 4 we are spending about $800 per month between CSA pickups and grocery store hauls. That breaks down to about $200 per week. There are weeks where we spend all $200 and others where we don't. I'm working on calculating how we allocate the dollars between produce, meat, dairy, and pantry staples to share with you here. We'll also be adding a Costco membership to the mix to see if that helps stretch dollars with two growing kids who snack a ton.

Meal prepping mirepoix has been such a game changer. Having this on hand makes it easy for soups, sautés and even a quick pasta sauce for this pasta bake.