The transition from one season to another is always a time of flux. And not just in terms of the weather, but what we eat and what we crave. As soon as the temperature starts to rise I immediately have visions of corn on the cob and tomato salad. The truth is that those are our culinary rewards for surviving the heat and humidity of summer. They're at their peak in August and September, and are so worth the wait. But it's hard to eat seasonally. What with strawberries from California and corn from Florida available all year long, why should we have to wait?
This spring we tried to stick to a more seasonal approach to eating veggies and gobbled up pea shoots, asparagus, and some recently sprouted radishes. But they aren't always available at the Key Food in our neighborhood in NYC, and we end up buying what's in front of us. I have moments of guilt when I buy that mix of gourmet tomatoes from Mexico or California. I think about how they were shipped across the country and how my carbon footprint just got gigantic.
I made a salad from that box of tomatoes, and although it was quite tasty, my guilt was weighing down on me. Does anyone else have this type of food anxiety: eat local versus eat organic versus eat seasonal? Or should we just be focused on eating healthy foods that are available to us regardless of the season or their provenance? Any thoughts?
I, too, have a crisis of conscious when I'm in Whole Foods and notice that the tomatoes I'm about to buy were grown in Mexico or Canada. A lot of times I won't buy them, but sometimes, if a recipe calls for a certain ingredient, and I really have my heart set on making it, I will do it. You have to do what you can. It's so much easier to eat seasonally in the summer time. But in the dead of February, not so much.
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