A Holiday Favorite

Of all the holidays, Thanksgiving is the most sacred and beloved by my family. It’s a day when everyone has a turn in the kitchen and makes some part of the meal we will all eventually share. Participation is (somewhat) voluntary because no one says no to my mom when she is in cooking mode. It can be as simple as chopping celery for stuffing or as precise as making the perfect flakey crust for the apple pie.

When I was 7 years old, my mom put me in charge of making the cranberry sauce since it was one of my favorite Thanksgiving foods. As a 7-year-old, I thought this was an extremely important responsibly and took it very seriously, measuring out the sugar precisely, making sure the sauce didn’t burn, and cutting up oranges for a fancy garnish. Our cranberry sauce recipe is now one I know by heart but one I still cherish and prepare with care.

Last year, my sister introduced my family to a new cranberry recipe: Mama Stamberg's Cranberry Relish. This relish is delicious on turkey, especially as a spread on a day-after-Thanksgiving turkey sandwich. It's a fresh twist to traditional cranberry sauce and now, a new staple to our Thanksgiving menu. You can find the recipe here: https://www.npr.org/2006/11/23/4176014/mama-stambergs-cranberry-relish-recipe).

I love the tartness of cranberries and cook with them all winter long. The combination of cranberry and orange is a fresh taste during the colder months. Stock up on bags of cranberries around Thanksgiving when they are on sale and freeze them. Oranges are also typically on sale during the winter months. Nothing chases away the winter blues like a cranberry, orange zest muffin (my favorite recipe here: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/member/views/cranberry-orange-muffins-50017734).

Until my leftover Thanksgiving cranberry sauce runs out, I will be enjoying it by adding it to my overnight oats or morning yogurt.

How I came to eat semi-seasonally

Growing up on a small farm in the hills of Pennsylvania, I have been fortunate enough to have access to hormone-free and humanely raised meat. Having a freezer full of almost unlimited amounts lamb, chicken, beef, pork, goose, and duck was something I took for granted until I went to college and started to cook for myself. I appreciated the delicious food my mom cooked while I was growing up but I never took the time to learn her cooking tricks. No matter how much seasoning I put on my store-bought chicken and out-of-season asparagus I paid way too much for, I couldn’t replicate her flavors. Even after researching recipes and hours in the kitchen, every meal was a disappointment - flavorless and bland. I started to get discouraged in my cooking ability and ate a lot more peanut butter toast. I began to think about why my mom’s food was so much better. Was cooking food that actually tasted good a mom super power? To answer this question, I did what any smart 21 year old college student would do, I called my mom.

My mom’s simple answer, "fresh ingredients." Fresher ingredients would mean more flavor and less work for the cook. I used to roll my eyes when my mom always bought seasonal fruits and vegetables and preserved them. The grocery store had strawberries in January so why she depriving me of them? But now that I was doing my own cooking and my plate was used to a high standard, I decided to take her advice to start cooking with more seasonal produce.

The result was almost immediate. Not only did my dinner taste better, but my grocery store bill was lower. Seasonal items are often cheaper. Why is pumpkin spice everything everywhere in the fall? Because as a culture we have come to shamelessly adore Starbuck’s Pumpkin Spice Latte. But also, because there is a plethora of pumpkins, which makes making pumpkin Cheerios, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin beer a lot cheaper for food and beverage companies.

Seasonal foods are not only easy on your wallet and taste better, they can also give you an extra boost nutritional when you most need it most. Cabbage is a vegetable my mom frequently cooks with during the cold winter months. It makes hearty meals and is packed with vitamin C, which boosts your immune system. Our cabbage is a root cellar vegetable, stored at the peak of flavor. We use it fresh in salads, as replacement for out of season lettuce

I’d like to state here that I am not a trained dietitian or cook, but I do like to eat tasty food. My research has shown that eating lots of different foods is beneficial to overall health. I also understand that cooking with ingredients in unexpected ways can be challenging. I’m sure many of you read “cabbage” and thought, “Ew, gross!”. But certain foods change in flavor depending on how they are prepared, for example cooked verses raw. If you don’t like the taste of something when it’s cooked, perhaps you could play with the seasonings or try it uncooked. But cooking with the seasons can help you become a more adventurous and creative eater and when your favorite fruit or vegetable is in season, you savor it all the more! I hope this website helps open you up to new foods and perhaps increases your appreciation for high quality food and the people who grow it.

If certain food is “clean,” does that make other food “dirty”?

I’ve never really liked the term “clean food.” If certain food is “clean,” does that make other food “dirty”? I’ve never thought of that pint of Ben & Jerry’s sitting in my freezer as “dirty.” When we refer to some foods as clean, it gives all other food that doesn’t fit into that category a bad rep. Ice cream and other special treats are a small part of my diet. I think we should stop describing food as good, bad, or clean and start thinking about what it does for our bodies. Does the food we eat give us the energy we need to get through our days and to conquer challenges? Is it nourishing us, body and mind? Food is fuel and what we put in our tank matters.

Since food is a key energy source, we want to get the most nutritional bang for our buck. A simple way to do this is by eating variety of foods that are harvested at their peak to give us the most nutritional value. Fresh fruits and vegetables that are picked when ripe have the highest nutritional value. Once produce is picked and processed, it starts to lose its nutritional value, (such as vitamin C, folate and carotenes decline the longer it’s store. (https://www.rebootwithjoe.com/benefits-of-eating-seasonally/).

Certain foods that aren’t seasonal or local, like bananas, are part of my diet too. I really like them and I'm not willing to give them up. Your entire grocery list does not need to be strictly seasonal, I know mine isn’t. The key is to start small and enjoy experimenting with unfamiliar ingredients or old ingredients in new ways.

Seasonal eating varies region to region. I live in the North East so my grocery list will look a lot different than someone is the South West. When trying to figure out what’s in season where you live, a simple google search is a good place to start. Another way to find out what’s in season is by checking out a local growers’ market. I tend to eat a lot more fruit in the summer. Strawberries in June, blueberries in July, and watermelon every day from mid-June to August. One of my favorite early morning or evening activity is to go strawberry or blueberry picking. I freeze the berries as soon as I get some to lock in the favor for smoothies, pie, or muffins during the dark winter months. October just came to a close here in Pennsylvania. Here’s what my grocery list has looked like the past month: