Spring menu, step by step
Interactive lesson: how to feed the family from March to May on the last of the stores, the first greens and the surplus eggs and milk.
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The whole lesson as text
1. What spring gives
Spring is a changeover: from a kitchen run on the cellar to one run on the garden and the barn.
- Spring is a changeover — In March you eat 70–80 % from stores; by May half comes from the garden and the animals.
- Cellar and pantry — In March you still have potatoes, carrots, beetroot, apples, sauerkraut, preserves, dried beans and flour. By May mostly cooking potatoes and flour are left.
- Polytunnel and garden — You close the 6–10 week gap for fresh vegetables with a polytunnel, overwintered crops, wild greens and dishes of eggs and milk. Tunnel lettuce and spinach come from February, radishes and spring onions in April.
- Hen house and barn — In April and May the hens give surplus eggs and the milk yield climbs to its peak. Nettles, dandelions and wild garlic come up along the hedges.
Why: English gardeners call it the hungry gap. The cellar empties and the garden has only just been sown. At the same time the hens lay as never before, and goats and sheep give the most milk of the year.
- In the mild south-west of England, west Wales and the south coast of Ireland everything starts 1–2 weeks earlier; in the uplands and the north of Scotland 2–4 weeks later. In the US and Canada, go by your USDA hardiness zone.
- The hardest stretch is from mid-March to the end of May: winter vegetables lose their flavour, and the new ones only arrive in May and June.
2. Stores count
The first job of the spring kitchen is not cooking but counting.
- 1 March: weigh it all — Count and weigh all your stores. Weeks each one lasts = quantity divided by weekly use.
- What goes first — Sauerkraut is good until March, then it goes soft. Carrots and beetroot in sand last until March–April: soups, beetroot salad.
- Turn the cellar — Whatever has started to spoil goes first. One soft apple in the crate is a reason to bake a pie that day, not to throw out the whole crate. Bottled preserves last a year, but the quality drops.
- Sprouted potatoes — They can be eaten if firm: cut the sprouts and green parts out deeply. Throw away potatoes that are very green or bitter, because cooking does not destroy solanine.
Why: Whatever you don't eat by June mostly goes to waste. Potatoes sprout, apples rot, sauerkraut goes soft, and the new preserves arrive in three months.
- Repeat the count on 1 April and write it into the menu.
- Whatever lasts beyond June, eat more often. Whatever runs out before May, ration or replace.
3. How much the family eats · Locked
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5. Wild greens · Locked
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6. Surplus eggs and milk · Locked
Buy the Spring menu module and you get the PDF to download and print, plus lifetime access to this interactive lesson: all 6 chapters, 24 steps.