Everyone ate a seasonal diet before there was central heat, refrigerators, and air conditioning. Summer fruits cooled you off, roasted winter root vegetables warmed you through, and spring onions poking up in the garden assured you of shorter nights and warmer days to come. Looking to recapture the health and nutrition benefits of seasonal eating? Start by finding local comfort food recipes and use the freshest seasonal produce you can find.
Seasonal Eating Varies Depending on Where You Live
Local recipe favorites and traditional comfort dishes show what people have been eating near you in a particular season for years. They’re a fun starting place to connect in to the benefits of local produce and flavors. Other ways to figure out what’s in season? Ask your favorite older friend for a meal they ate growing up. Go to a nearby non-chain restaurant that’s been thriving for years and check out the menu. Ask people at a farmer’s market what they cook with the produce they’re selling. Try a CSA Box.
Look for recipes from your grocery store’s website that feature local produce.
Pro tip: Stores put the freshest and most bountiful fruits and veggies on sale, so those items likely traveled from nearby and are definitely in season.
Stay Connected to Your Community and the Seasons
Not only do seasonal foods give you nutritional benefits from all those ripened vitamins and minerals, they support your psychological health, too. When your body doesn’t have to work so hard to cool you down in the summer, or to keep you warm in cold months, you have more energy for yourself, friends, and family. Knowing that others in your town likely sat down to dinner with some of the same hearty vegetables or ripe berries connects you to your community.
Why start with comfort food? It gets a bad rap, after all. But one person’s fattening, overly rich, or crazily decadent meal translates into another’s filling and nourishing good value. After all, college towns abound with foods that students’ Moms cooked for them before they went off to study.
If you can’t find seasonal produce that fits your budget, or your tiny kitchen can’t support all of the cooking you’d like to do, still try the best seasonal foods you find nearby. They’ll give you a taste of – and goal for – your future culinary projects.
Try Shrimp and Grits in the South Featuring Sprightly Spring Onions
Season: Spring in the South
Fresh produce comes earlier in the South than more northern climates. Look for asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, collards, and citrus fruits. Spend more time walking outside before the humidity gets denser. Breathe in scent-filled flowers and take a meal outside on your garden-level apartment patio near my favorite tree – a dogwood.
Excellent seasonal charts abound to check on what’s fresh near you, or look at the website of the CSA farm you’ve been eyeing. Try the Seasonal Food Guide website or download their app to look up exactly what’s in season in your state and season. This granddaddy of localization even lets you find what’s fresh in the early or late parts of a month.
Seasonal comfort meal: Shrimp & Grits and salad with berries and bacon
Find your favorite recipe for Shrimp & Grits. Start with a base of creamy, cheesy, stone-ground grits made with butter and whole milk. I’d substitute coconut milk and vegan butter. Gently cook your raw shrimp in butter and broth. Then chop up some cooked bacon and pale green onions. Layer the shrimp on the grits. Sprinkle the bacon and onions on top.
Make a side salad with newly picked spring greens, and add in berries – strawberries or cherries even – and top with a dressing that includes finely chopped Vidalia onions and, of course, a bit more bacon on top.
Fresh Spring produce: spring onions, strawberries, and spring salad greens
Look for fresh-caught shrimp from local sources and small batched stone ground grits. If you’re lucky enough to have a tiny container garden on your balcony, use those newly sprouted onions and lettuce leaves, and pick a few berries for the salad.
Nutritional & psychological benefits: selenium, B vitamins, calcium, and a smile
Selenium from the shrimp acts as an antioxidant. Those grits’ B vitamins support your metabolism. Calcium keeps your bones strong. And sharing that meal – with your pooch, a book, or your whole family – gives you a moment of comfort and companionship.
Start with Corn to Mimic a Midwest Summer Potluck
Season: Summer in the Heartland
Though my Mom always brought the healthiest dish to our summer church potlucks, I appreciated the effort she made to fit it in with the rest. Invite your friends or neighbors over and ask them each to bring a dish.
Seasonal comfort meal: Cream Corn Casserole, Calico Bean Casserole, fruit salad for dessert
Find your favorite recipe for Calico Bean Casserole. Want to skip right to the eating part instead of the find-your-local-produce-stand step? Open cans of baked beans, kidney beans, and butter beans and add them to your browned hamburger mixture. While you’re at it, open some creamed corn, canned corn, and a cornbread mix to speed up the side dish casserole.
Fruit salad demands absolutely nothing but fruit. So peruse your CSA Box, grab your imagination, and encourage your kids to eat it again tomorrow for breakfast.
Nutritional & psychological benefits: protein, fiber, and collaboration
Legumes, whether soaked from the heirloom package you bought last summer or straight out of the can, combine the benefits of a plant based protein with those of a vegetable. This kind of win-win gets you ready for negotiating with your partner over who gets the car tomorrow.
Spice Up Your Southwest Fall Meal with Hatch Chiles
Season: Autumn in the Southwest
Dry, hot summers changing to cooler fall months give you the perfect excuse to take a long drive past local farms or steal a few extra minutes in the morning to savor your breakfast burrito.
Seasonal comfort meal: Green Chile Chicken Stew
Find your favorite recipe for Green Chile Chicken Stew. Feel free to substitute potatoes for rice or to open up a can should chile growers not make it near you to roast them as you wait.
Fresh Fall produce: potatoes, corn, hatch green chiles, garlic, onion
Take a few extra minutes to clean the ears of corn and notice how amazing it feels to peel back the leaves and remove the cornsilk with your hands.
Nutritional & psychological benefits: vitamin C, potassium, and confidence
Vitamin C requires daily replenishment. So does your self-confidence. Knowing that you can handle spicy food without wimping out – mild hatch chiles for a start – gives you what you need to take on even bigger challenges.
Include Preserved Fruits to Combat Northwest Winter Chill
Season: Winter in the Northwest
Sloshing through the rain on a bone-chilling, wet day, look for ways to warm yourself, whether a strong, multi-shot latte with lots of oatmilk, or a fire pit under an overhang outside your campsite.
Comfort dishes: Red Wine Chicken Stew and jam-and-cream cheese coffee cake
Find your favorite recipe for Red Wine Chicken Stew. Start by browning bone-in chicken pieces. Use the root vegetables you have on hand. Add broth and seasonings, some tomato paste and wine. Serve with a coffee cake for dessert, made comfort-style. Use rich sour cream inside and dot it with cream cheese and local jam.
Fresh and preserved winter produce: pearl onions, turnips, parsnip, and carrot; and preserves made from local cranberries or blackberries
Whether stored by your grocery store or in the cellar of a farmhouse, look for hearty vegetables and preserved local fruits.
Nutritional & psychological benefits: fiber, manganese, antioxidants and warmth
You may not be able to spell manganese, but everyone knows how to give a hug.
Seasonal Eating Connects You to Each Other
Whether you grab a seasonal muffin from the food truck on your way into work or delight your friends with a comfort-food Sunday night dinner party, seasonal eating will connect you to your community. As we grapple these days with extremes of opinion, about food or whatever, take a minute to remember that we’re all in this together. Everyone eats, and we all, ultimately, share the same local dirt.
