Category Archives: Food Matters

food politics, philosophy, essays, and issues

Eating Seasonally: summer 2010

stuffed round zuchs 2.jpgThis is a recipe in the works.  The ricotta stuffing was excellent but the squash skin was kind of tough which was disappointing.  Hopefully I’ll be able to present this in the next week or so. 

We’ve been committed to eating mostly local produce for the last three years.  What “mostly” really means is that I buy almost all local produce all year but each week I allow myself to buy one or two produce items that aren’t grown locally.  Avocados are one of them.  I don’t believe I can live without avocados and I’m okay with that.  Because of buying avocados frequently I don’t buy oranges or tangerines (this winter I got three boxes full of them grown by a family friend which was an incredible treat) or bananas or pineapples or most other things that never grow in my climate.  If I decide I want any of those things then I make sure that I don’t buy avocados that week or I give up buying lemons or limes which I buy periodically for cooking.  It’s all about maintaining a high proportion of locally grown produce all year round. 

Nearly always if you’re eating locally you’re eating seasonally.  Eating seasonally has changed the way I think about produce for the better.  When you eat tomatoes all year long you not only support an unsustainable system of shipping produce worldwide but you commit to eating sub-standard quality food.  Wait, but that wasn’t what I was going to say- the best thing about not eating tomatoes until they’re in season is that they become infinitely more treasured.  I cheated this early summer and bought some locally grown organic tomatoes grown in a greenhouse, which, it turns out, weren’t that great anyway.  What can I say?  After ten months of buying NO “fresh”* tomatoes I was dying for my first taste and was disappointed.

This week the tomatoes are truly in season!  Here in my area they are beginning to show up at the farmer’s markets and they have flavor and I’m making a ridiculously poor sentence just because I’m so excited about it I can’t decide what to make with them first and I’m buying as many as I can at each market.  (That’s a lot of excitement.)

Right now the summer produce is at its peak and I’m finding that there are so many things I can only cook during the summer because this is the only time I can get the real deal: the ripe local flavorful food that epitomizes warm weather and prevents me from relocating to the North Pole during the heat.  Seasonal eating makes me savor food so much more than I did before.  I’m experiencing a little bit of sensory overload right now.

Here are some of the things I want to make with what’s available right now: 

Tomatoes: fresh salsa, pico de gallo, tomatoes on salad, stuffed tomatoes, slow oven roasted tomatoes, tomatoes in eggs, tomatoes in sandwiches, tomato gratin, pasta with tomatoes, a strange but unbelievably delicious casserole my mom makes with tofu feta and fresh tomatoes and cauliflower, tomato soup, Mexican rice, enchilada sauce, and Caprese salad.

Corn: corn chowder, corn on the cob, black bean chili with fresh corn, fresh in salad, corn in enchiladas, corn relish, creamed corn, and corn fritters.

Summer squash: squash gratin, stuffed squash, grilled on sandwiches, sauteed with fresh herbs and garlic, squash in summer soup, grilled as a side, zucchini bread, ratatouille, and in zucchini and feta fritters.

Eggplant:  grilled for sandwiches, grilled and cubed on pasta, baked, stuffed and baked, ratatouille, made into sauce for pasta with tomatoes and basil, baked with garlic and put on sandwiches, eggplant lasagna, and pickled!

Cucumbers: added to an assembled salad, sliced and dressed in mustard vinaigrette, in a raita sauce, tzatziki sauce to go over falafel, eaten plain, and dipped into ranch dressing.

 Those are just the main players.  Now I’m seeing beets- I love a salad with beets dressed in lemon and olive oil with kalamata olives and feta over a bed of lettuce.  Or roasted beets in couscous.  Or just roasted and eaten.  I love them pickled too.  Soon I’ll be seeing a little celery which is exciting because I gave it up for most of the year when I went seasonal.  I used to put it in almost everything I cooked.  I sometimes blanch and freeze it but if I don’t get around to it then I don’t eat celery for 11 months out of the year. 

What to make?  How to make everything I want to in such a short time?  The hardest part is that a lot of the time I’m truly happy just eating a cheese sandwich with fresh tomato, mayonnaise, spicy mustard, on wheat bread.  Just like that.  So simple.  It’s what I had for lunch today and it’s so good!  I’m one of those people who doesn’t think a sandwich is complete without tomato on it so I don’t eat sandwiches during most of the year either.  Except for grilled cheese with home made dill pickles

I stand in my kitchen the moment I have time to cook something and am paralyzed with choice.  Winter and spring cooking is about finding 100 great ways to use celery root and chard and carrots but summer cooking is about becoming drunk with the limitless possibilities for meals. 

Before I ate seasonally I didn’t appreciate what I was eating half so much or was nearly so conscious of the changes in my diet or of the seasons themselves in a broader sense; how when the air is hot and redolent of ripe blackberries it is also a time when I am most profoundly physically uncomfortable, my hens coo happily every late afternoon when the sun sinks and the heat eases and I toss them such succulent scraps as watermelon rinds or whole pieces of watermelon that Max has rejected, young squash trimmings, corn cobs full of corn scraps, and the low hanging blackberries in the garden.

Then there’s the way the air feels just as we turn the corner from the first two weeks of ripe tomatoes, when the nights start biting ever so slightly and underneath the lingering heat of summer is that queer smell we all recognize that tells us fall is coming; it’s time to preserve food madly, pick apples, clean up the summer garden if you’re normal and not lazy like me, and when the local giant cauliflowers start showing up downtown it means it’s time to pickle and it means that the last of the eggplants has drifted into the farm compost pile. 

Seasons still drive humans on a truly primal level but so many of us have allowed ourselves to operate outside them, to ignore the natural drives that tell us when to eat every rich vitamin-laden piece of produce we can get our hands on against the coming bleaker months, when to store things away for the co
ld months, when to pull out the blankets, hibernate, go inward, and when to come back outside to watch the first green fronds ignite the icy cold with bright hope…and it matters.  I feel more connected to myself and the earth when I eat seasonally. 

This makes sense since eating is such a basic need we are constantly trying to fulfill and without it, like light, we will die. 

So while I find it overwhelming to have so much lush produce at my disposal at a time when I am most inclined to eat salads and simple sandwiches, I also love this feeling of possibilities.  I just ate a salad with all organic locally grown (affordable) produce: lettuce, tomatoes (ripe!), raw corn, and cucmber, and it was soul satisfying. 

Tomorrow I hope to experiment with corn chowder.  I’m chasing a memory of a bowl of corn chowder I ate in San Francisco in a cafe that has been gone for over 15 years and who’s name I can’t even remember: a bowl of corn chowder that was so sublime I completely forgot who I was sitting with while I ate it and ever since then there has been no corn chowder to match it.  I keep trying.

Perhaps I’ll get it right this week and if I do I’ll share it with you.

Happy summer eating!!  

 

*I do buy canned tomato sauce and canned diced tomatoes and when I can I try to can my own.  The year before last I canned enough tomatoes myself that I didn’t even buy canned tomatoes for a year!  They tasted better and were actually cheaper than the factory canned tins.  If you don’t believe me you must read my article on the cost analysis between home canned and store bought canned tomatoes:

Is it cost effective to can your own tomatoes?

Mid-Winter: What To Eat

It is exciting to me that so many more people are making their way back to seasonal eating.  For those people dedicated to eating as locally as possible this isn’t something they have to think about because eating locally forces you to also eat seasonally.  Learning to eat seasonally isn’t easy when nearly all grocery stores are always stocked with tomatoes and summer squash in winter.  How do you know what’s in season?  Different regions are going to be a little (or a lot) different.  In Florida right now it’s strawberry season but by the time it’s strawberry season where I live, in the Pacific Northwest, it will be much too hot for strawberries in Florida.  So I can’t tell everyone what’s in season for their area specifically.  I can only give some general guidelines to help you find out what’s in season where you live.

Here are some tips to discover what’s in season where you live and following that I will list what’s in season specifically for my area.

Shop your local farmer’s market: this is the number one way to discover what’s in season.  Though many farmer’s markets close during winter, be sure to do some research including nearby towns or cities that may have year-long markets that you can visit.  A winter farmer’s market will have only the produce that could be grown in your region and stored (such a root vegetables) in winter.  At the one farmer’s market in Portland that’s open all year many vendors have produced their own jams and pickles and sauces from the produce they grew in summer so you may not be able to buy tomatoes from them but you can buy salsa produced locally.  Even if you don’t make a habit of regularly shopping at a winter farmer’s market, go to one to educate yourself.

Ask what produce is local at your regular supermarket: many large supermarkets will carry a few local items even if they aren’t labeled as such.  Be sure to talk with the produce manager to find out if they carry anything local.

Read garden books about your region: here in the Pacific Northwest we have a fantastic garden guide (but only for regions west of the Cascades) put out by the Seattle Tilth that is a month by month guide to what to plant and when.  Even if you don’t garden you can easily see what grows during different seasons in your specific climate.  Look for climate specific guides.
I would love to see some Southerners and Southwesterners compile a region specific list of what’s in season for them in winter.  The list I give below should roughly apply to most of the top 2/3 of the United States but will not apply at all to people in the South and Southwest for which I apologize! If any of you out there have been working on this topic and studying your region for seasonal eating and can provide a detailed list, I would love to publish it here.

What to eat in mid-winter:

Fresh eating: (either pulled from your own garden or bought from the store, these items should be available picked fresh)
Chard

Kale

collards

leeks

citrus (though it comes from the southern states if you buy them, winter is their season)

watercress

chervil

mache (corn salad)

parsley

sorrel

Asian greens (tatsoi, mustards, bok choi…etc.)

endive

radicchio

persimmons (depending on region, may be done by early winter)

mushrooms (if you have a local cultivated source)

From the root cellar: (even if bought from local farmers, most likely these things were harvested in fall and stored)

potatoes

carrots

onions

cabbage

winter squash

celery root

parsnips

rutabagas

sunchokes

turnips

beets

shallots

apples

pears

kiwis (usually harvested in late fall and ripen in storage in winter)

garlic

From the pantry:

fruits

pickles

jams

sauces

dried things

We have become very accustomed, us modern people, to eating tomatoes in winter and apples in summer but it isn’t natural and except for the root vegetables that store well nearly all year, no produce is at it’s best when it’s no longer in season.  Winter is a harsh season, especially for people living in the extreme north.  Our diets should become more limited in the winter.  When you spend all winter eating mostly greens and root vegetables punctuated by things you preserved for the pantry, you will look forward a great deal more to the change in diet the spring brings with asparagus and radishes and lettuce.  It may sound bleak if you’re used to eating lettuce salads all winter but unless you’re eating lettuce from your own green house, it isn’t natural to eat lettuce in midwinter.  It’s a time for soups and root vegetable roasts.  While it may seem counter intuitive to some people, eating preserved food (particularly made by you) is healthier than eating out of season vegetables.  It takes a big shift in habit but I think you’ll find that when you eat seasonally you become more connected to your own region, the earth’s natural cycles, and your food will taste better and provide more optimal nutrition for you.

While I eat mostly seasonally and still stick mainly to locally produced food, I do have exceptions.  What I learned from going mostly local for ten months (a couple of years ago) was that there are a few things in my diet that I don’t want to live without.  Avocados and citrus do not grow in my region so buying them means I’m always getting them from hundreds of miles away.  Though sweet potatoes can grow here, this isn’t their ideal region and very few people grow them.  Tropical fruits such as bananas don’t grow here ever.  Pomegranates are another thing that I used to enjoy but which don’t grow where I live.  While I was being more strictly local I bought none of these things.  What I learned was that I can live life without bananas.  I can live life only buying sweet potatoes at the same time my organic CSA has them (we don’t get a lot of them, I bought some extras), and I can live without eating citrus often.  But I cannot live without eating avocados.  I cannot live without imported coffee and olives.  While I was doing my local challenge I had a small list of imported foods that I allowed myself to have such as coffee, tea, oil, sugar, and some other essential items.

I consider imported items as a flexible list but a list that must remain roughly the same size at all times.  So while I’m buying avocados, I don’t buy other non-regional produce such as other tropical fruits.  If I really want to buy bananas for a special occasion (I bought them for the first time in two years a couple of weeks ago) I don’t buy some other non-regional item.  I am happy with the balance I’ve reached for now.  I am constantly looking for closer sources for things like oil and while cost is obviously a factor since I have very little padding in my budget, I can’t always afford to buy things made closer to home.  However, I found an olive oil that’s produced in California (organic!) that costs only slightly more than the cheap imported olive oil I can buy at my discount grocery store*.  California is a lot closer to me than Spain or Italy so buying from California not only reduces the number of miles my food had to travel to get to me, it also supports the economy of my own country.

Seasonal eating has given me a greater appreciation for the food I cook and the flavors I associate with each month of the year.  I would like to end this article with a little list of the foods that you shouldn’t be putting in your grocery cart unless you live in one of the southern regions in which these things might be showing up at your local farmer’s markets:

Not in season in winter:

tomatoes

fresh basil

eggplant

summer squash

green beans

lettuce

strawberries

berries of any kind

peppers (unless preserved)

cucumbers

Happy seasonal eating!

*I should note here that even at my discount grocery store the olive oil is surprisingly expensive.  If a Trader Joe’s was closer to me I’d probably buy theirs because it’s such a great price.  But I heard from a friend that even Trader Joe’s has some California oils available.