On Taking a Seasonal Seven
On Taking a Seasonal Seven
Where I urge you to try eating locally and seasonally, for just four weeks a year.
I had a rare day to myself a few weeks ago and decided to spend an afternoon helping
do some yard work in his backyard. He had need of a chainsaw and I had one to spare1. So I loaded up my saw, the ham I smoked for Sam2 after our butchery class in May, Doggie CWD, and some workwear3, and headed down to not-quite-Lil’-Rhody to put in an honest days work4.As I’ve alluded to before, I’m not a huge podcast guy. But, I do sometimes enjoy listening to interesting people talk about interesting things, so for the three-quarters of an hour I had in the car, I put on an episode of Peak Earth, a podcast hosted by Case Bradford5, featuring Dr. Anthony Gustin. The episode was great, with a big focus on one of my personal favorite topics, being more attuned to your sources of food. Towards the end of the episode, Case tossed out the idea of a Whole30 for seasonal eating, and he and Anthony riffed on how this might work.
Well, Case, Anthony — I gotta say, I love this idea. As I was listening to the discussion, I started thinking about what this would look like in theory and in practice. Eating seasonally, knowing where your ingredients come from, what it takes to get them to your plate, that’s something that has become exceptionally important to me in my old age6. I was so excited about the idea, I thought about it for most of my ride down and back.
What I came up with is not quite the month of Whole30, but instead, one week — seven days — each season where you source your food locally and seasonally. For four weeks each year, you’ll eat in tune with nature, with what’s available then, and without the luxury of most things in the grocery store. Hopefully, at the end of each week, and certainly at the end of the year, you’ll be able to have a better appreciation of what it means to eat with eyes wide open, certainly you’ll get to know at least one of two farmers, and maybe you’ll even feel a little better.
This isn’t meant to be prescriptive — there’s not set list of “Seasonal Seven” approved foods or ingredients — and it will vary significantly based on where you are in the country, in the world. My week in the New England spring will look significantly different than Case’s in Los Angeles, from Nana CWD’s in Florida7. It will take a little creativity, a willingness to give up fresh fruit in the winter, tomatoes in the spring. But I think it’s a worthy challenge. What I’ll try and do for the rest of this post is give a rough outline of how you might make it work — using the Summer Seven as a baseline, since that’s the season we’re in8.
Just to warn you: this is a long post. You may want to put another pot of coffee on — or leave this for weekend reading. It’s a fun one, though, I promise — and a challenge I think is well worth trying!
For those of you who signed up through Seasonal-Seven.com — welcome! This is Cow We Doin’, my newsletter mostly about food. It’s the launching pad for the Seasonal Seven guide, as the actual website gets built out.
Part One: Setting the Stage
Eating seasonally is not something new — for most of humanity’s existence, this was just how we ate. Without access to refrigeration, air freight, global supply chains, and vehicular transportation, you ate what was available, what was growing, or what you had preserved in for later when you could. It’s only in the last hundred years or so that being able to eat almost anything at almost any time was commonplace9.
Josh McFadden, in his seminal book on seasonal eating, Six Seasons, writes that by frequenting “local farms [and] markets,” you can create a “virtuous cycle that nourishes life.” He encourages his readers to eat “with the seasons,” taking advantage of what is actually growing at different points of the year. If you’re serious about eating this way more than a few times a year, if you want to make it a focal point of your life, I’d highly encourage you to pick up his book.
For the purposes of this guide, though, we’re going to focus on the summer months, where we stand today. Here on the CWD Ranch, we’re seeing tomatoes ripening on the vine, zucchini and squash growing fat, cucumbers, watermelons, kale, peppers. It’s my favorite time of the year to eat vegetables, often raw, often right from our beds. We’re seeing the same at the farmer’s market and farm store, with even more options that come with larger scale.
On the other side of the spectrum, summer also brings opportunities for fresh seafood — maybe caught yourself, or maybe from a fishmonger. Eggs are laid year round, and meat birds are fully fattened by midsummer. As we get closer to fall, you may also get some cows or lambs that have been slaughtered early, or you’re working through the last reserves of the previous year’s harvest.
With the cornucopia of options, this is the easiest time of year to eat seasonally — and the perfect time to try it out. It’s also a great time to eat and cook outside, which always seems to make food taste more delicious. Fresh and light are the keys to the game.
So, let’s jump in on how to make this happen.
Part Two: Making a Plan
Before you hightail it to the farmer’s market and buy up everything you see, it’s important to take a minute to reflect on how you actually like to eat, prep, and cook. Unlike buying packaged foods — and even much of the fresh foods at a grocery store — seasonal food doesn’t have an infinite shelf life. I think it’s helpful to answer a few questions to help set the stage for your week of seasonal eating.
How proficient are you at cooking? Do you feel comfortable shopping for what’s fresh and available first, and building meals around them? Or, do you work better when you know what you’re making for the week and then can shop for ingredients based on that plan? Maybe you’d prefer a hybrid of the two options?
Do you like to cook one or two big meals and eat leftovers the rest of the week, or do you like to have something new each time you eat? Either can work, but depending on your preference, it might change how you think about shopping.
Do you like to do one big grocery run and get everything at once, or would you rather do multiple smaller trips — maybe even one for each meal?
How are you going to store your food for the week? Do you have fridge space to buy a bunch of unbagged and unwashed produce? If you buy frozen meat, can you fit it in your freezer? Do you have containers for leftovers? Nothing will preclude you from being able to eat seasonally, but how you prepare logistically might change.
For our family, what works best is to do shopping for the week on Saturday morning with a rough idea of what we’re going to make, calling audibles based on what’s actually available at the farm and/or grocery store (yes — you can shop seasonally at a traditional grocery store, it just takes a little more work). We try to make one or two big meals on the weekends — ones that will provide us with leftovers for lunches or a quick dinner option — and then three or four smaller, quicker meals to round out the week.
What ingredients are allowed?
In my mind, a Seasonal Seven is meant to highlight what’s available locally at any given time of year, help you get closer to your food, and give you a better appreciation for how far removed much of what we get in the grocery store, today, is from it’s natural state.
What it’s not meant to do, however, is be overly restrictive.
With that in mind, there are no hard and fast rules for what you can use when cooking your meals. The most strict I would encourage you to be is on your produce and meat — you should really try to only source these ingredients from within reasonable driving distance from your house10 and what is typically grown in that season11. For meats, frozen is okay, but whatever you’re buying, try to make sure it’s pasture-raised, able to graze as naturally as possible, and comes from a local farm. Same goes for butter and cheeses.
What I wouldn’t be overly concerned about are things like cooking oils, salt and other seasonings, and dried ingredients12. Try your best to source these from local producers — you’ll often find great options while you’re shopping at the farmer’s market — but if you need to use an imported olive oil or Parmigiano Regianno cheese in a recipe, don’t sweat it13. Meals are meant to be enjoyed!
And last, but not least — liquids. In my book, you can drink coffee, tea, beer, wine, and other spirits (if you partake) to your hearts content. My advice would be to try and get ones made locally — a local coffee roaster, brewery, or winery would be great — but don’t feel like you need to forgo your morning espresso because coffee beans aren’t native to your area.
I’ll walk you through what this looks like in actuality in a later section, but we’ve found this is the easiest for us as we wrangle two kiddos and fulltime jobs. If you don’t have kids, cook mostly for yourself, or have a bigger family, you may need to take a different approach. Before Mrs. CWD and I lived together, I often would do multiple runs to the grocery store each week, buying just a single meals worth of ingredients. It can be easier to cook seasonally if you do this — you’re truly making use of what’s available right then and there — but can be more challenging if you’re feeding more people. Conversely, if you have a bigger family, you might get more mileage out of making more bulk meals, cutting down on prep time throughout the week.
Part Three: How to Source
Once you’ve figured out a rough plan for how you’ll logistically make your week work, you need to actually start buying some food. I think the absolute best way to do this is buying either directly from a local farm (if they have a farm stand, or, better yet, a CSA) or at a farmer’s market. By shopping this way, you’re guaranteeing that what you eat is local and seasonal. While you’re shopping, talk to the folks behind the counter — if they are the actual farmer, ask them about their farm, their planting schedule, what they are most excited to grow and to eat. Ask them what they’d recommend and how they’d prepare it. Part of what makes eating seasonally and locally so exciting is it is a great way to build connections — to your food and its sources, to your community.
If you have never shopped at a farm or farmer’s market before, it can be a little intimidating. There aren’t always organized aisles, produce can sometimes be unlabeled, there are no grocery carts or self-check out lanes. Don’t be scared! For the most part, people are friendly and will help you find what you need — or help you figure out what you’re looking at. They might recommend something you’ve never tried before, might suggest what was just picked this morning, or may direct you to some options that are on sale.
I’d also encourage you to join a CSA14, which are available at many farms. This is a structure where you prepay for a season’s worth of produce, which provides the “seed money” for the farms production in the fall and winter. We’re CSA members at our local farm and couldn’t be happier with what we get each week in season — starting with greens and garlic scape in the early season and progressing to a full-on cornucopia by the heart of the season.
If you don’t have access to a farmer’s market, you can also eat seasonally and relatively locally at a conventional grocery store. This is certainly easier at a place like Whole Foods, but you can make it work almost anywhere. The trick is to know what is in season and then check whatever you’re buying to see where it came from. Many grocery stores now will have a label showing where things are grown. Per the USDA, you are “buying local” when you buy things produced within 400 miles. You can certainly try to do even better — I like to buy, whenever I can, from within the state I’m in. Often, smaller, regional or independent markets will have relationships with more local farms and have hyper-local produce for sale. If you can’t figure out where things are from, you can always ask someone in the store — if they don’t know, they might be able to find out for you.
An interlude on meat.
Most of this advice is applicable to produce — fruits and vegetables — but it’s equally applicable to your meat. Most farmer’s markets have at least one beef or poultry farmer hawking their wares. Many farms, if they don’t raise their own meat, will sell it from other farms as well. My recommendation is to buy local, and whenever possible, from farmers who raise their animals on open pasture, grass-fed and finished, and with care. You should be able to visit the farm, meet the animals, and see how they live.
Often, they easiest way to buy this type of meat is in bulk, directly from the farm. Many beef farms, for example, during the spring and summer will offer options to reserve a quarter, half, or entire cow. When you buy meat this way, in bulk, you get the benefit of pricing similar to ground beef at the store, but for every cut. Depending on your source, you may either be buying a pre-selected cut sheet or you might be able to select your own. If the latter, you’re truly picking what types of cuts you get — you can do tomahawk ribeyes or a full rib roast; a full brisket or have it ground into burger meat; you can get the bones cut for stock, the fat saved for tallow, the organ meat if you want it!
If you’re going this route, I’m working with my friend Matt from North Bridger Bison to put together a guide to the cut sheet, but in the interim, this is a great guide from the appropriately named
.
The third — and probably my favorite — option for sourcing food is to talk to your neighbors. You never know who might have a small veggie bed in their backyard and can provide you with tomatoes, cucumbers, and summer squash. You never know who might have a flock of chickens and can spare some eggs — or ducks or geese or even lambs, like one of my neighbors. Unless you live next to a farm15, you probably won’t be getting all your meals directly from your neighbors, but you can certainly get a meals worth of fruit or vegetables. And the connections you make are priceless.
Additional Resources:
The USDA Food Portal provides a list of farmer’s markets, CSAs, food hubs, and farm’s with markets that you can use to find options local to you.
EatWild is a terrific resource to find pasture-raised beef, poultry, and other meat which you can either buy in bulk or in some cases individual cuts.
LocalHarvest is another directory that connects consumers with farmers.
The USDA put together a high level primer to help consumers understand what produce is in season at different times of year. If you don’t have access to a farmer’s market and are shopping at the grocery store, you can use this to make sure you are only what’s in season. This guide isn’t perfect nor local, but is a starting point.
Part Four: Sample Meals and Shopping List
Everything we’ve discussed so far has been fairly theoretical. We’ve talked in mostly generalities; now, let’s look at how it looks in actual practice. What follows is how the Family CWD actually planned, purchased, prepped, and ate for our Summer Seasonal Seven, which we did this last week. We’re in New England, so keep in mind this might look very different for you depending on where you are in the world.
For ease, we planned only for dinners, with a rough idea of leftovers and some quick dishes — frittatas, pastas, the like — for lunch.
The Planning
Saturday: Sirloin roast, braised leafy greens, homemade cornbread
Sunday: Pizzas with local sausage, veggies, and mozzarella
Monday: Raw squash salad with fresh caught fish
Tuesday: Leftovers
Wednesday: Roasted chicken and cabbage
Thursday: Pork chops with braised kale
Friday: Cabbage slaw with ground beef, Asian-style
The Purchasing
The bulk of the ingredients for the week came from three places: our vegetable garden, our CSA vegetable share, and from our CSA meat share. This year we probably over planted on zucchini and squash, so we made the most of the harvest this week. Our farm share was mostly greens — kale, chard, and cabbage. Our meat share comes frozen, so we had a variety of meat, all locally raised and harvested, in the freezer.
We supplemented those sources with some picks-ups from a few farmers’ markets, some local farms and farm stores, and some of the remaining cuts from the quarter bison we bought from North Bridger Bison earlier this year. Technically the bison isn’t local — it came from Montana — but I know exactly which bison we’re eating, where it was raised, and who raised it. That’s about as “eyes wide open” as you can get.
As much as possible, the non-veg or meat parts of the meal came from local suppliers and much was homemade — the bread, the cornbread, pizza dough — anything we could make, we did. We even made our own jam from some currants we got as part of our CSA pick up. How’s that for farm to waffle!?
The Prep
We tried to space out the week with a mix of quick cook, easy meals — the squash salad with trout, the cabbage slaw and ground beef — with some larger, more involved meals — the sirloin roast, the chicken, the pizzas. This allowed us the benefit of the weekend and a more leisurely pace to cook for a few meals, and then on weekdays, be able to throw things together quickly.
We also rounded out snacks with local fruits, yogurts, cheeses, and plenty of homemade bread.
The Challenges
The hardest part of the Seasonal Seven is sourcing the ingredients. If you’re lucky enough to have some terrific farmers markets, farm stands, and local groceries around you, this week might not look much different from a normal one. You just need to be prepared to do a lot more cooking. The hardest part was lunches on days when I was on the run. I relied heavily on locally produced prepared foods to get me through those days — but not everyone is content with a log of pepperoni, a hunk of cheese, and kefir for lunch. Do what works for you, but know the easiest route is leftovers.
If you don’t have easy access to local food options, this could be a harder week. You’ll need to plan more, may need to do some bulk shopping at a place you don’t normally do it, may need to “hunt” for your ingredients. This might be a more rewarding experience at the end of the week — and you might find it’s easier than you thought. Be open to stopping at random grocers, seeing what they have in stock. Maybe you’ll find some great new shopping options — but at the very least, you’ll appreciate the ease of your typical grocery store even more!
As I mentioned earlier, I don’t think you need to be fanatical about non-primary ingredients. We made ample use of imported olive oil, imported cheeses, salt, seasonings, etc. We certainly could have sourced all of these things (or substitutes) from local vendors — but I think the real “challenge” of the Seasonal Seven is to focus on produce and proteins. You don’t need to think you’re “cheating” if your seasonings came from a bottle.
The Eating
Part Five: Bringing it Home
At this point, you’ve brought it all together. Hopefully you’ve been able to successfully navigate the intricacies of the farmer’s market, the constraints of seasonality, the challenges of eating zucchini at every meal. Hopefully, you’ve been inspired to think a little more critically about where your food comes from, why you’re eating it, and how it gets to your plate. As I’ve said often and will say again — there’s no better experience than eating a tomato fresh off the vine in August, no worse one than eating a bland one from a carton in December.
For us, this was one of the best weeks of eating we’ve had in awhile — and we always eat really well. Using fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients forced us to be cognizant of what we were making, what we were eating. It would do a disservice to the food if we just threw it together in a slop! Having great ingredients is just another reason to take some additional pride in what you cook.
Even after the week is over, try to buy more local ingredients, more seasonal ingredients, more often. Spend the extra second looking at the origin location on your produce, maybe stop by a farm if you pass one by on your commute. As I’ve said repeatedly, the nice part about eating like this more often is you’ll get to know the people who put your food on the table. From making an effort to eat locally, I’ve gotten to know our neighbor who raises ducks and lambs — and reserved a lamb for our freezer after the fall harvest. I’ve gotten to know the head farmer at our local farm — and been able to pick out our CSA vegetables after hours16. Shopping and eating locally is the first step in a virtuous cycle that helps you become more attuned to the seasons, to your community.
If you need some additional recommendations and resources for eating locally, here are a few cookbooks, podcasts, and articles I’ve found helpful:
The Peak Earth podcast which inspired this post.
Six Seasons by Josh McFadden.
My Kitchen Chalkboard by Leigh Belanger.
Thoughts and resources from Michael Pollan.
So there it is — a Summer Seasonal Seven. I encourage you to give it a try over the next few weeks, while we’re still in the midst of summer, harvests bountiful, markets open. While it will still be relatively easy in the fall, you’ll want to have tried this a few times before you make a run at it in the winter!
After you do give your Seasonal Seven ago, let me know how it went. What did you eat? Where did you shop? What was hard, what was easy? I think there’s a huge opportunity to build a community around this idea, and an even lower-hanging fruit to build this concept as a regular part of your life. We’ll do another example in the fall, and again in the winter and spring. I’m also working on building out a more comprehensive guide, which will be announced through Cow We Doin’ — so if you’re interested, make sure you’re subscribed.
With that, I’ll let you enjoy your weekends. Get to the farmer’s market. Eat local. Enjoy the summer and eat outside.
Selfishly, I also wanted to get into the woods behind his house and start prepping for the fall and deer season. I figured that a few hours taking down dead trees and moving piles of mulch would at least buy me enough good will to set up a tree stand and a trail camera.
“Sam’s Ham” as labeled in my freezer.
Still managed to get poison ivy all over my arms.
I had aspirations to go spearfishing that day as well, but the weather didn’t cooperate.
Case is what I’d call an “internet friend” — a dude who I follow on Twitter. I appreciate his take on vitality and I also owe him some kefir grains. Sorry, Case!
I’ve written about this in more posts than I can count, so feel free to browse through the archives. I think Kid Food does a good job explaining this ethos.
What are the odds I can convince her to do this? One in a hundred? In a million!?
If this catches on at all, I’ll put together a primer for the fall, winter, and spring as well.
And remember — just because something is common does not mean that it’s normal.
My definition of local, by the way.
Meaning something like tomatoes grown in a greenhouse during the winter in New England don’t count.
Pasta, for example, rice, or dried beans.
Try to at least buy them from a local business, though!
Community Supported Agriculture.
And been able to let Doggie CWD roam the farm and patrol for geese!
Regarding Footnote #7--one in a million chances is generous odds--I'll try for that.
My Summer Seasonal Seven, unfortunately, will not be going well. It will not be going at all this summer, and probably not next summer, and most likely not the summer after. Fall may also be challenging. Winter is definitely out. There may be hope for Spring. I am thinking the only way to really make it work is to come and live with you.
I already ate hot dogs from The Dollar Store twice in one week this summer.
I am so proud of your sense of adventure, and truly admire your "Can Do, Will Do" attitude on everything in life that is enriching and good. I told CWD Uncle Pat at dinner last night that I am aspiring to be a kinder, gentler "Andi," and throughout the whole meal I was kind and gentle. At the end of the night, Uncle gave me a long, appreciative hug, but then whispered in my ear "When is the old Andi coming back?".