Until we moved to the farm, I never considered cooking in season.  Sure, I'd pick some lettuce out of the garden to make some salad, but then I'd toss on a hodgepodge of vegetables from different times of the year which travelled to my grocery store from Florida, California, and South America.

Since then, I've been learning to cook in season.  It's a fun process as long as you have these required ingredients:

• Figure out what's in season now.  Two good ways are to visit a farmer's market or to grow your own veggies.
• Be adventuresome!  I used to think I didn't like garlic, onions, greens, summer squash, winter squash --- the list is endless.  But then I learned to cook them...
• Find good recipes and try them.  The New Laurel's Kitchen cookbook is not only delicious, it is divided up by vegetable type, so you can flip to the section on summer squash when you are overloaded with them.  I found this a good start when I was first learning to cook, but now I turn more often to Epicurious.com and type in my ingredients in the search box then scroll through the choices until something strikes my eye.  (Also try going to google and typing in "recipe: potstickers" or whatever you're looking for a recipe of.)
  
• Join forces with an intrepid eater.  I wouldn't be half so willing to try new things if Mark wasn't always willing to eat them up.  He never complains if a dish is disgusting --- he knows that's all part of the learning curve! 
  
• Resolve to let nothing go to waste.  If you're in the typical American mindset where it doesn't matter if a few carrots rot in your vegetable drawer, you'll never learn to really cook locally.  Instead, keep a running fridge audit in your mind and let nothing stay in there more than a week.  Learn to eat leftovers --- if they were delicious the first time, they'll be delicious the second time, and will save you time and money.
  

Learning to cook in season is really about learning to be part of this earth, knowing where your food came from and trusting the nutrition you put in your belly.  Take some baby steps and try it out!

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.

Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.