Eating seasonally is the natural extension of eating local. It connects us with the rhythm of the growing season and adds a cozy structure to the year. As Andrew Zimmern said last week on MPR's Appetites, in the fall we stop craving tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella salads and start turning our minds to roasted root vegetables, and hearty soups. Many of you, like me, will spend the next few weekends canning the last of the summer tomatoes and dreaming of how it will perk up your winter chili.
At Lucille's Kitchen Garden we are literally buried in apples and pears as our customers turn from the bright flavors of strawberries to the comforts of cinnamon and ginger. This week I was thinking about how we all benefit from the fact that we crave things when they are in season. First, our produce doesn't have all the food miles created by shipping heavy items like apples and pears across the country. We still carry many of the flavors throughout the year, but we can usually stock up on them now. Secondly the price of raw ingredients is about 1/3 less when they are in season, which allows us to keep a competitive price point and make our products available to a wider audience of people. Finally, it just shows how many of us have embraced this natural rhythm of the season in our food lives.
I was especially excited this week to see that The Heavy Table combine our Ginger Pear Jam with Donnay Dairy's Granite Ridge, amazing aged goat cheese in a fantastic sandwich that I will be making this weekend. Check out the blog and let me know how it goes. Don't worry, in about 9 months we will be back to pure bliss at the idea of a caprese salad!
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