What Matters

With two great workshops coming up : Feeding Healthy Kids with Tracey Blahy and Yoga Diet-Eating for Health and Peace with Shanthi Muthu, I felt inspired to review some seasonal foods to help keep both the summer and my health going strong!

Seasonal food recipe finder: August
It's the peak of summer with everything growing in abundance, but it's a good time to stock up for winter

This month's newcomers...
Plums, greengages, sweetcorn, blackberries, early damsons, crayfish, red grouse, hare

Still in season: Artichoke, aubergine, basil, beetroot, broad beans, broccoli, carrots, courgettes, cucumber, fennel, french beans, garlic, lamb, new potatoes, onions, pak choi, peas, rabbit, radishes, rocket, runner beans, sorrel, spring onions, turnips, watercress ; apricots, blueberries, cherries (English), gooseberries, loganberries, peaches, raspberries, redcurrants

It’s the Taste That Counts
For most of us, the taste of the food we buy is every bit as important as the cost, if not more so. When food is not in season locally, it’s either grown in a hothouse or shipped in from other parts of the world, and both affect the taste. Compare a dark red, vine-ripened tomato still warm from the summer sun with a winter hothouse tomato that's barely red, somewhat mealy, and lacking in flavor. When transporting crops, they must be harvested early and refrigerated so they don’t rot during transportation. They may not ripen as effectively as they would in their natural environment and as a result they don’t develop their full flavor.

“Foods lose flavor just as they lose moisture when they are held. Fresh, locally harvested foods have their full, whole flavors intact, which they release to us when we eat them,” explains Susan Herrmann Loomis, owner of On Rue Tatin Cooking School in France and author of numerous cookbooks. “Foods that are chilled and shipped lose flavor at every step of the way – chilling cuts their flavor, transport cuts their flavor, being held in warehouses cuts their flavor.” It’s hard to be enthusiastic about eating five servings a day of flavorless fruits and vegetables and it’s even harder to get your children to be enthusiastic about it. But 16-year-old Jenny Morris from Littleton, CO is a big fan of eating locally grown fruit in season. “I’d stand in line for one of those peaches from the farmer’s market,” she says, referring to the succulent peaches harvested mid-summer from Colorado’s western slope.

For tasty recipes, suggestions and more conscious food choices make sure to check out the workshops coming up and books in our store :)