What is Eating Seasonally?

Eating seasonally is eating fruits and vegetables during the season or month that they are harvested in. This means you are buying a specific fruit or vegetable soon after it has been harvested by a farmer. Everyone can eat seasonally, you’ll just have to do a bit of research beforehand. You can find out when a variety of produce in Ontario is in season by visiting the Foodland Ontario website. Once you know what’s in season and what sounds good to you, all that’s left is to stop by your local grocery store!

What’s In Season this Month?

You can skip the research for this month because I did it for you, here’s what’s in season during the month of March. The only fruit in season this month is rhubarb. Rhubarb is a unique fruit thanks to its pink-red coloured stalks and tart flavour. When cooked, rhubarb releases more of its sweetness making it ideal for certain desserts. Unlike the one in season fruit, there are actually a lot of delicious vegetables in season during the month of March. These vegetables are beets, cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, yellow and red onions, parsnips, potatoes, rutabaga, sprouts, squash and sweet potatoes. There is clearly a large variety of vegetables in a bunch of different plant families to choose from this month.

The Benefits of Eating Seasonally

Now we know how to eat seasonally and what to eat, but why should we eat seasonally, what’s the benefit? Well, eating seasonally benefits both us and the environment in many ways. When produce is in season, it tastes better. The taste of a fruit or vegetable is enhanced when it has naturally ripened and been harvested at the right time. Not only that, fruits and vegetables are also the most nutritious when they are grown in season because they are able to follow their natural growing and ripening patterns. Furthermore, produce is cheaper when bought in season. This is because farmers are able to harvest more of a specific fruit or vegetable when it is in season;when it is out of season, farmers are not able to harvest as much. In order to make the same amount of money from less produce, the cost needs to go up. If you want to save money and eat a fruit or vegetable when it is out of season you could opt for a canned or frozen option. Finally, eating seasonally is more environmentally-friendly because it supports local produce. Produce in season has the ability to be grown locally, when produce goes out of season it needs to be imported from other parts of the world with the suitable conditions. Therefore, local farming reduces all the damage caused to the environment when transporting and keeping produce fresh during the transportation. Eating seasonally provides a great variety of benefits to our health, our budgets and the environment while also boosting the local economy.

In Season Recipes

Alright now you are convinced and have bought some in season ingredients but the question is: what should we make with them? How should we eat them? Here are some delicious recipes using March’s in season ingredients you can try at home. Check out these easy-to-make breakfast muffin tin frittatas using three in season ingredients: mushrooms, sweet potatoes and onions! For lunch, try this mighty minestrone also containing three of our in season ingredients: parsnips, carrots and cabbage. There’s also a butternut squash lasagna perfect for dinner. It incorporates two in season ingredients, squash and onions. What’s dinner without dessert? As mentioned, rhubarb makes for a yummy dessert so let’s end off on a sweet note with an old-fashioned bottom-crust rhubarb pie. What a delicious day’s worth of in season eating!

After finding out how delicious, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly it is to eat seasonally, I’m sure we can all give it a try.