Hello Spring: 3 Tips for Cooking Seasonally
With spring in full swing here, I wanted to share a quick post about eating seasonally - including the benefits as well as 3 tips on doing it successfully.
While we’re all focused on boosting our immunity and eating as healthy as possible, one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to obtain the most nutrient-dense foods is to eat with the seasons.
Nature knows what we need, and provides the environment to grow the foods we need when we need it!
It’s also much less expensive to buy foods seasonally as they’re readily available in your area and you won’t have to pay the added costs for having things not native to your area shipped in.
The easiest way to eat seasonally is to shop locally. When you shop your local Farmers Market’s you’re bound to get a fresh glance at what is “in season”. I love seeing the baskets and baskets of a local farm’s most recent bounty. There’s just something satisfying about benefiting from the results of their hard work and effort, along with the nourishing attention from mother earth. You’re only going to find things grown seasonally at a Farmer’s Market, so that’s definitely the best way to get started.
Don’t have time to get your local Farmer’s Markets? Sign up for a local CSA delivery box! These programs are designed to help bring locally resourced produce to your table on a regular basis, saving you time, money, and energy.
Use a seasonal Food Guide to assist you in knowing what foods are seasonal to your area - this will help you plan your meals around what you will discover to be in season, less expensive, fresher and nutrient-dense, etc. Then when you shop, you’re not overwhelmed looking for items that aren’t in season or are overpriced because they had to be shipped in from another state or even country.
I love this website for learning what is in season at any given time where I live: https://www.seasonalfoodguide.org/
In my state, springtime brings arugula, asparagus, chard, chives, fava beans, fiddleheads (what in the actual?), green onions, lamb’s quarters, lettuce, Spinach and a few more amazing root vegetables and greens. (can someone say, GINORMOUS salad!)
*Bonus Tip: Not sure what to make with the foods that are in season in your area? Download one of these awesome apps “Plant Jammer” or SuperCook to plug in your most curiosity sparking foods and see what creative recipes pop up! (I even found a recipe for fiddleheads!)
The bottom line is, you really do want to try to stick to eating seasonally as much as possible. Your immune system and pocketbook will both thank you wholeheartedly.