eating seasonally: late autumn, early winter

Eating seasonally starts with knowing what’s in season.

Maybe it sounds like I am being redundant or saying this while looking down my perfectly nourished nose. Neither of these is the case.

It’s not as easy as it seems. When I first put myself up to the challenge of learning to eat with the seasons some decade ago, it became a wild ride in consternation, frustration & ultimately found myself feeling maddeningly bamboozled by my local grocers. I wanted to support diversity & the grand potential of our agricultural offerings and was greeted with a staggering display of sameness.

Your local grocery store chain may carry a seasonal display of butternut, acorn & spaghetti squashes, all arriving at the same week just after the Halloween pumpkins. And they are large. Uniformly so. The same large, stuffable squash specimen they will continue to be until they are cut-off by truckloads of strawberries in early spring. Too early, Spring. (there’s no such thing as a ripe strawberry in March, or at least, not in our hemisphere.)

It’s hard to know what is genuinely in season when year round we are entreated to the same array of: red bell pepper, green bell pepper; red cabbage, green cabbage; zucchini, asparagus: sometimes thin, sometimes thick; red apples, green apples.

Brown potatoes, red potatoes, sweet potatoes. Basically, that’s what you get, with the occasional variation. These variations usually accompanied with the springing up of paperboard signs telling you not to forget to reserve your turkey, your gefilte, your ham. It’s hard to know what is genuinely in season when our grocery stores have traded in the sometimes temperamental timeliness of nature with the rolling calendar of their advertising outputs.

When a person decides to try & eat seasonally, we are left trying to piece it all together with vague recollections of specific ingredients enjoyed some distant August ago. Or at the celebratory holiday spreads from Independence Day to Thanksgiving. However, really, many of us have been lead astray by a universe of grocery store mono-culture.

So, I guess, today I am here to say, don’t give up. If you’re even remotely genuinely interested in seasonal food, sustainabality, agricultural diversity, local food, the healthiest most delicious food available, whatever your motivation: don’t give up. There are trained chefs that don’t know what’s in season, I promise. Your local farmers market is the best place to start. Even if you can’t find one, which many of us cannot, use your dollars to support produce in season wherever you find it.

Below you’ll see a list I’ve compiled of seasonal foods. Just know that I am working with a broad guideline because we all live in wildly different regions & seasonality is known to change with even the teeniest microclimate. What is in season also has so much to do with what the farmers in your region practice, or shipping companies, it all depends. I don’t make judgments, I can attest to a great appreciation on occasion for kiwi fruit & exotic mango varieties.

I also happen to live in a state that has multiple growing seasons per year, so it can be a bit dizzying. Without the marching band precision of seasonal change, it can be hard to track the passage of time here in Southern California. Though, if we care to, we can trace the lineage of a year by the meals that grace our tables night to night, from month to month. Or at least, that is the sort of meal-driven utopia I am striving towards.

The table I have put together for what is in season for the next few weeks. Some things are hugely dependent on your region. Like say here, in California, we don’t have quince. I miss them. Stewed, poached, compoted & chutneyed, I miss that knobby fruit. Although, here have grapes. Actual grapes. Sweet delicious grapes for a few more weeks. And, did you know that meat has a season? It does. Turkey. Prime Example.

In any case, I hope this helps. And I would really love to hear from you what you see in season in your region & what you love to make with it all. We’re heading toward weeks/months with such lean offerings, we all need a little inspiration. Right now, my favorite thing from the list below is garlic mashed rutabaga & radicchio, charred then drizzled with honey & vinegar.

seasonality chart: late autumn/early winter

(click here to print!)