3 things I noticed when we started eating more seasonally
& a downloadable guide to eating seasonally (for paid subscribers)
I was scrolling substack’s food & drink category and found myself saving every post about cabbage. Cabbage spring rolls. Cabbage salad. I’m eating a bowl of cabbage seitan soup right this minute. I pause. What is it with me and cabbage right now!?!
Oh yeah. Eating seasonally.
During my bachelor’s degree for nutrition science we learned a bit about food cravings. They usually provide insight about what your body needs. Hunger, but that’s obvious. Tired? You’ll probably crave sugar. Nutritional or caloric deficits? You bet. Cravings are also indications of our moods and highly influenced by fluctuations in hormones. Most of us ignore the underlying causes of our cravings, failing to connect with our body’s natural instincts.
And that leads us to the first thing I noticed when we started eating more seasonally.
My body is more in tune with the natural rhythms of the year and actually started to crave foods that were seasonally available.
Eating seasonally was something that gradually happened to us through growing more and more of our own foods and eating out of our pantry of home canned goods before hitting up the grocery store. You might have had a different experience, especially if you’re just learning to cook. We don’t cook from recipes often, and when we do we are confident in making substitutions using what we have or going without. Well, when you start growing more and more of your own food and eat a tomato that’s been warmed by the sun, specks of dirt still studding its skin, and juice that dribbles down your chin the tomatoes that you can buy in January just don’t cut it anymore. You stop craving them out of season.
Growing our own food has helped us make this transition to eating more seasonally. We’ve got things growing in the garden year-round, though the winter months are less reliable. From April through October though, it’s a common occurrence to be able to walk through the garden at 5 pm to fill a basket that will inspire dinner. While that’s harder to do during the winter months it has created a habit of intentional eating and planning. It has instilled a higher value in fresh, organic and local (if not homegrown) foods.
As a primarily plant-based family, the produce section tends to get most of our attention and fill most of our cart when grocery shopping. I recently caught that I was spending less and less time in the produce section and paused that busy mom brain - y’all shopping with a 4-month-old and a 3-year-old is not easy when it comes to sticking to a list. Was I forgetting something? Did I need those peppers or the bag of oranges on sale? I felt like I was missing out. It took me a little while to realize that I was just noticing a pattern that’s been shaping up for a while. I’m relying less and less on grocery store produce because I’ve put a higher value on our homegrown foods. I’d rather go without (and usually don’t get that feeling of missing out) than buy an apple that had likely been harvested over 8 months before hitting my lips.
During these winter months when our own gardens are basically bare and we crave something that’s freshly from the earth we support our local growers. We have an incredible community of growers here in Columbus and while we have to pay a bit more to purchase food directly from the farmer or through a CSA we are buying intentionally. That means we’re buying less. This brings us closer to our community and helps build a more resilient food system. So, maybe that’s the best reason of all to put in the work to live a little more in tune with the seasonal shifts in nature.