This morning I made a plan to keep my ADHD brain organized for the rest of the week.  I probably should have gone through next week, too, but I will leave that for Sunday evening, because then the stress of the weekend will be over.  Yes, I stress more on weekends than I do on weekdays, because my weekends are unstructured compared to my weekdays.

So as for my meal plan, I did make one.  I also made a plan for what else we are doing.  But meal plan first to save our food budget from going to places it should not go.  I am using up leftovers and foods that are close to expiring or needing to be used before they would no longer be usable.  My food management has been off this week.

Tonight was gluten free pizza.  I used leftover bits and bobs I had in the freezer.  I had some leftover onions from the chicken schwarma, I had some ham and green pepper dices that I had cut up for omelets earlier this week, and the ever present uncured pepperoni slices which were getting close to needing to be used up and I don't play with uncured meats, and we had some shredded Muenster cheese, which melts as well as mozzarella, which we do have, but I didn't feel like shredding.  So I used up some leftovers.  I love not wasting food.  I added salads and a can of pineapple on the side as it was a week from expiring.  I don't usually pay attention to expiration dates on canned food, but pineapple can eventually eat its way out of the can due to the acidity.  Pineapple doesn't play games.

Tomorrow for dinner I am making the last chuck roast in the freezer and the last four red potatoes and a quart of my homegrown home canned green beans.  I sugared up the second container of strawberries I bought, because they were starting to get old and sugaring helps preserve them a few more days, and we will have some of them for dinner.

Sunday's dinner will be turkey chorizo chili and gluten free cornbread with the rest of those sugared strawberries.  I will be putting corn in the chili instead of beans and lots of actual peppers, 2 poblanos, 1 jalapeño, 8 Anaheims, and one organge, one red, and one yellow bell pepper, all roasted, so there will be plenty of veggies, then stewed in the crockpot for most of the day.  It is going to be so yummy.  The chorizo has been in the freezer for six months and even though it is vacuum sealed it should be getting used up.  I had been waiting until I could get more, it has been out of stock every time I hit WinCo, but they still have a spot for it, so I just keep hitting wrong.  Still, I want the chili, so I'm going to make it.  Plus, all but the sweet peppers either need to get used or dehydrated before they go bad.  They are getting wrinkly.  The corn is frozen, so it is fine.

Saturday's plan is working in the garden.  First up is clearing the path between where the garden bed three is and where garden bed row four will be.  Garden beds one, two, and three are each one long raised bed that is 22 feet long.  Row four will be either two or three separate raised beds, depending on the configurations I want them to be in.  I don't remember what they were, but I know I could either make them four feet wide, three feet wide, two feet wide or one foot wide and the length would depend on how wide I made them.  I think I was prevaricating between 3 feet wide and 2 feet wide.

My cinderblocks beds have 32 inches of growing space, but are four feet across from edge to edge and it is hard on my back to reach from the edge to the center.  So I don't want to do the 4 feet wide configuration.  I know if I do the wider the bed, the more I will try to force into the space, so my thinking on making it two feet wide I won't try to squeeze extra plants in, like I will if there is three feet of space.  It is a bad habit of mine and I think if I only have two feet and not 32 inches, it will nip that in the bud.  It won't make as good a use of ground space because I will still need enough space between rows for a wheel chair to go down in the future, but I also need to have it be reachable from a wheelchair, so there is that.

So the big hope is clear the path, take up the black plastic, rototill the path and the segment where the next row will go and where the next path will go, rototill, rake flat, cover with ag fabric and if there is time, build the row of raised beds.  It sounds more daunting than it is.  Our rototiller is super easy to the point where I can handle it.  It goes through the ground like it is soft butter and turns on a dime.  The garden beds take about an hour to assemble with two people, with a third person helping to hold the beds pieces, it goes together even faster.  If it wasn't going to rain on Sunday we could try to get it down in two days, but it will rain Sunday through Wednesday and we are running out of time before the growing season starts.

On Sunday I will go through my seeds and see what I will be planting this year.  I will buy a lot of my starts, but some things I will grow straight from seed in the ground.  I need to get my sweet potato slips started within the next two weeks.  I will be growing them in a raised bed in a small green house  that we are making.  From what we have been told by everyone around here that grows them, the mail order companies send them too late for our growing season, which has changed significantly from a decade ago.  We have much hotter springs and summers with longer, warmer fall seasons, but we don't get sent slips until July.  We could be planting mid-June in a greenhouse and those two extra weeks make a difference in the north.

I can start lettuces, radishes, and green onions next week and green beans and peas as well as brassicas the week after that.  There is a lot to do to prepare, so I need to get my garden notebook out and start figuring out my plans.  I need to harvest and put up as much food as possible, because I have no idea what the next year is going to bring.  If I can take buying food out of the equation as much as possible, then that is what I am going to do.