Eating with the Seasons

This year I’ve been trying to make more of an effort to eat seasonal and locally grown food. I’m focusing on produce (fruit and veggies) for now but I’m definitely developing a greater awareness of where my other food comes from – like my black beans that are sent all the way from Canada!

I don’t know about other people, but I’m definitely a creature of habit. I’d previously always have chosen the same fruit year-round because it’s convenient and didn’t take a lot of thought – I wouldn’t go out of my way to try new things.

Summer brought about such an awesome array of feasts involving apricots, plums, peaches and blueberries. Not to mention all the delicious avocados that I’d been adding to my salads. I was so sure that the change of season to autumn and eventually winter, which I dread, would also mean that there would be no yummy produce for me to enjoy. Instead, it’s been really exciting having apples come back into season (and being so delicious!), along with kiwifruit, oranges and pears. The lemons on my tree are finally ripening too!

Eating with the seasons and being a bit more aware of what is available at different times of the year can be challenging, especially given that we have such a global market. I can assure you though that your taste buds will be rewarded and you’ll develop a much greater appreciation for your food if you tend to eat it only when it is naturally and locally available!

Here are a few of my top reasons to eat in-season produce, and not just from a sustainability point of view:

• It’s not likely to have been shipped from overseas or been grown intensively in hot houses. So you’re saving travel miles and you’re saving on the carbon footprint of growing the produce. If you’re eating in season, you’re eating foods that grow in the conditions of that season too, meaning less artificial light is needed along with less intensive watering and irrigation.
• You can get it unpackaged from your farmers market (you can also usually get it unpackaged from your supermarket, but we all know that the farmers market is more fun!). If your farmers market is a local farmer it’s a great way to be able to buy in season produce without having to think too much about it. If they don’t have it, it’s probably not in season (or you slept late and all the good stuff is gone).
• Seasonally picked produce will be fresher when it gets to you as it will have been picked when it’s closer to being ripe and will have ripened naturally. That does wonders for the taste of the produce and also for the vitamin content! If you didn’t know already – fruit and veggies do lose nutritional content once they’re picked so it’s always best to eat them as soon as possible.
• Buying in season fruit is WAY cheaper than buying out of season produce that’s incurred storage and shipping costs along the way. If you can, it’s often worth stocking up on some in-season fruit and either stew it or chop it up and freeze it for a few treats out of season. Avocado can be frozen so next summer I’m also hoping to freeze some guacamole for winter movie nights with nachos.
• You get to experiment with growing your own foods if you’re lucky enough to have the time and space. Even a few tomato plants can give you a great harvest and the satisfaction of eating food that you grew yourself, most likely also without any pesticides!
• Your body will be provided with the nutrients that it needs for each season. Mother nature and humans have been doing this for a lot longer than your local supermarket has been providing you with all the produce all of the time. Did you know that summer time stone fruits provide you with beta-carotenes and other carotenoids that help to protect you from the sun?
• It’s a great way to push yourself to try new foods and learn new recipes, as well as finding ways of preserving food that’s currently in season and storing it for other seasons. Last summer we got a few punnets of strawberries for an absolute steal ($1 each) so I washed and halved them and spread them out on a tray in the freezer. We did the same with our awesome tomato harvest and they were safely stored away in a jar and ready to be used later on.

5 A DAY and What’s Fresh are great resources for seeing what’s available at different times of the year. They both have a good layout and easy to view list of produce – you can select by month of the year on 5 A Day, and What’s Fresh gives you a quick view of current produce in your area. If you click on a fruit or vegetable it will give you information on the months available, nutritional information, storage guidelines, history and growing facts. The focus for this website is New Zealand grown produce though I’m sure that a quick Google search “in season produce your city” will get you the information for your area.

Here is a list of my top picks of seasonal produce:

Some delicious goodness that’s plentiful all year round is in the table below for you. You’ll notice that it’s mostly veggies, with local fruits being a lot more seasonal. Why not have a go at growing some of these if you have the time and space? We have a rhubarb plant that we can use all year!

I hope that this has been helpful – I’d love to know your thoughts on eating with the seasons, or missing out when produce is out of season.