A hand with eating seasonally

If, like me, you are a child of modern times - which translates to 'having no more than the vaguest clue as to when things are in season' - then here's someone helping to set us on the straight and narrow with our weekly food purchases:

Eat the Seasons offers a newsletter, sent to you every Wednesday, telling you what fruit and vegetables are currently in season and therefore the best thing fo you to buy.

The website also offers articles on many of the fruit and vege listed. These contain brief history, biology, nutrition, tips and 'other stuff' sections, as well as their 'pick of the recipes' - both online and those available in popular UK recipe books (e.g. Jamie Oliver, Raymond Blanc, etc).

There is also an Eat the Seasons USA/Canada site for those of you in North America.

Although I'm probably preaching to the converted, here are the very good reasons we should eat seasonally (as listed by Eat the Seasons):

• to reduce the energy (and associated CO2 emissions) needed to grow and transport the food we eat
• to avoid paying a premium for food that is scarcer or has travelled a long way
• to support the local economy
• to reconnect with nature's cycles and the passing of time

but, most importantly, because

• seasonal food is fresher and so tends to be tastier and more nutritious

Comments

[Trig]

It's pretty good in my book. I've been running a regular "eat the seasons" piece in my sidebar for some time now, adding some thoughts of my own and linking back to their website. There aren't many good sources of such information, so it's important to promote those that we can find.

[Jeanne]

Great idea - thanks for pointing it out to me. Having grown up where the climate facilitates rahter a lot of year-round availability, I sometimes need a little helping hand to know what's seasonal at the moment ;-)