
Wisconsin summer is back, and not just in your freezer! The Summer Farmer’s Markets are back in full swing and are full of local produce and other goodies for you and your family to enjoy. With food growing in our area again, it's time to explore what we can cook with them and how to eat in season.
Eating in season is a great way to get the freshest, most nutritious produce in your area. Although fresh fruits and vegetables can be found at the grocery store year round, getting them from the Farmer’s Market when they’re at the peak of ripeness is unmatched. When you buy the strawberries at the grocery store in January, they were most likely picked before they were ripe in order to withstand shipping and then artificially ripened using chemicals that mimic the naturally occurring ones in the fruit. If you’ve ever grown strawberries and eaten them right off the plant, you’ll know that artificial ripening is a poor substitution, and doesn't bring the extra nutrients natural ripening brings.

A couple hundred years ago, there was no "seasonal eating". There was just eating, because they didn’t have grocery stores that could ship in strawberries from across the world in the middle of winter. Eating food as it naturally becomes available is what we evolved to do. As hunter-gatherers, we ate an incredible variety of seasonal fruits, vegetables, herbs, roots, nuts and meats, most of which looked very different from what we eat today.
Since the early days of agriculture, we've been very particular about breeding traits we like in our plants and animals, and discouraging those we don't. This is how we got the cabbage family, or the cruciferous vegetables. Cruciferous vegetables, or Brassicas, include "turnips, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, rapini, romanesco, mustard seed, mustard greens, collards, kale, bok choy, canola, rutabaga, radish, watercress, and arugula, among others (CUESA)." All of these plants share a common ancestor, and as it spread across Northern Europe and into Asia, slight mutations were cultivated to make the flowering heads bigger (broccoli), or big greens (kale), or bulbous stems and roots (radishes). By selecting for the traits we wanted, we transformed a largely unappetizing plant into a wide variety of delicious ones. Farming may have changed what eating in season looks like, but I for one, am not going to complain.

Image courtesy of Vox
Eating in Season = Eating Local, unless we’re talking about pineapple, which we do not have here in the glorious north of Wisconsin. However, Wisconsin does have plenty of delicious produce to boast about during the summer months. Here's just a little taste of what you’ll find at the Farmer’s Market in June:
Herbs
Sprouts
Watercress
Spinach
Lettuce
Rhubarb
Berries
Radishes
Potatoes
Peas
Mushrooms
Greens
Green Onions
Broccoli
Cabbage
Bok Choy
Beans
Beets
Asparagus
And More!
To find what’s in season in any state at any month, check out this seasonal food guide!

Image courtesy of the Midwest Farm Report
Eating in season is also a great way to challenge and delight your taste buds and challenge your cooking skills with different ingredients every month. Some of the produce, like peppers, carrots, and tomatoes, are pretty easy for most of us to use. But other produce may present more of a challenge. When you find yourself unsure of how to use something, a great first step can be googling "______ recipes". Another way to get ideas is to taste. If you taste bok choy, it's half leafy green and half cabbage/celery hybrid. With this new perspective, you can work in terms of what you already know.
There are some simple preparations to learn that work really well for specific fruits and vegetables. Rhubarb can be mixed with any berry to make a lovely crisp, and most leafy greens can be tossed into a summer salad. Herbs can also be a nice addition to a salad, and having a variety of greens and herbs makes for a much more flavorful plate of leafy greens. Root vegetables can always be roasted, and the smaller they're cut, the faster they'll cook. If you get stuck, check out the Recipe page on Farmshed's website for ideas and step-by-step instruction for using Wisconsin's seasonal produce and Frozen Assets!
Stay Curious,
Neena
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