This week's lunch round-up: fresh and simple hits the spot

I'd like to say that lunches this week will be mostly fresh items because I planned healthy lunches. However, the truth is, fresh items are simply easier than prepared items. And Monday was another very busy day.

Monday, I made the cucumber dill pickles (3 jars) and another quart of blackberry pancake syrup (now have 2 quarts of blackberry syrup), plus I dug potatoes (backbreaking and exhausting work), roasted a chicken, ran errands (2 markets), did bookkeeping, and 2 loads of laundry. So, I only had 2 prepared items this week, supplemented with fresh garden produce. Here's our lunch selection for the week:

• cinnamon-almond granola ( I have to admit, the almonds were just the end of a bag of almonds, and much more almond "dust" than actual almonds)
• rice-bean-tomato casserole
• fresh plums
• fresh apples
• fresh tomatoes
• fresh cucumbers

And of course, always there is peanut butter, bread, yogurt and mixed nuts.You may notice that this week there are no boiled eggs. We're now down to our last 3 dozen of fresh eggs, and 1 dozen frozen. I'll be needing these eggs for baking this month. So for a while, no more hard-boiled eggs.

It looks like I should be able to make another batch of cucumber dill pickles. That will bring us up to 6 jars of dill slices, to go with 8 jars of bread and butter zucchini pickles, and 9 jars of watermelon pickles. I'll also make green tomato sweet and dill relishes later this month. That should be it for pickle making. October will see me in the kitchen making plum chutney and tomato salsa.

Now, I'll go enjoy my cup of blackberry tea (the rinsings from the pan of blackberry syrup added to yesterday's tea bag, for a fruity and frugal cup of tea), and enter a couple of drawings from my recent shopping (on receipt, survey info in exchange for entrance in drawings for gift cards).

What's on your lunch menu this week?


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