Cherry Season!

"Eat your food when it is in season."

It sounds so simple right? It is the way nature intended, it is when the food tastes the best and it is also better for the environment! If you have a ton of farmer's markets near you like the lucky people of the Bay Area, eating food in season is much easier because you can actually see what the farmers are picking and selling to you. If it isn't growing, then obviously it is not for sale! And California is great because our climate allows all sorts of yummy produce to be in season almost year around. But if you are not near a good farmer's market and you have to rely on your grocery store for all of your fresh produce, eating your fruit and veggies in season can actually be a lot of work. Although the modern grocery store is a fantastic and convenient necessity, it has also become very confusing for our basic instincts. Anything and everything you could want is available for a price, so why rely on your sense of smell or other base instincts just for food? And how confusing for our sense of sight! Because an out of season tomato sprayed with enough pesticides and wax can look bright red and delicious, but once eaten is actually found out as just a horrifying and tasteless impersonator of a real tomato. But if you make eating in season a habit, pretty soon it can become second nature (seems so backwards, as it really should be your first, but that is modern life I suppose) and the benefits are for you, your wallet, and of course the planet.

If you have heard all of the "eat locally and in season" hype but you are still fuzzy on why exactly it all matters, here are just a few of the reasons you should make the effort.
1. First of all, it is cheaper and that is a good enough reason for most people.
2. The amount of gas and fuels it takes to ship produce from other countries to get it to you when it is not in season is horrendous! We all know fossil fuels will run out someday, so why waste it on produce out of season when it isn't even tasty?
3. Produce out of season and not from a local farmer is picked very unripe so that it doesn't go bad while it makes its journey. This results in less nutrients (all those nutrients and vitamins are from the sun as fruit ripens on its little branches) and produce that is not so good
4. Maybe if you don't like fruits and veggies it is because you are not eating your fruit in season. There is no flavor in an out of season piece of fruit!
5. You can get excited for an upcoming season, and it forces you to work with what you have. Once you eat in season, you might be surprised at the variety and maybe discover some foods you have never noticed before.

For as long as I can remember, my very favorite time of year has been the beginning of Cherry season. I grew up in a small town called Cherry Valley and as you can imagine, cherries were of course something all of us kids looked forward to. It began in June, which also happened to be my birthday month. The last few weeks of May I would begin to see the U-Pick Cherry signs go up and eagerly await the Cherry Festival that would finally open its gates on June 3rd- my birthday. It was like the whole town was opening up and celebrating just for me. As a young girl my mom would scrape up the money to take us to a local cherry "farm" (usually a couple acres of someone's yard that was planted with cherry trees) and we would get our little buckets and be allowed to run through the trees grabbing whatever cherries were in reach and plunking them into our mouths and sometimes into the buckets. Unfortunately time and lawsuits have caused that wonderful tradition to be a little squashed, but I still get a kick out of the first weeks of June and the first cherries of the season. Today Beau and I bought a small bagful of cherries from a little produce stand and just like the little kid I once was, I find myself unable to stop myself from eating far too many.

The eagerness that consumes me as I await this time of year, with its cherries and strawberries and other delicious summer fruits is reason enough for me to want to eat foods in season. What fun would it be if I just ate cherries all year long? Part of the absolute joy of eating is the waiting and anticipating for those special flavors that hold all of those wonderful memories for us. I like the tastes of summer because it reminds me of the excitement I would feel as a little girl to be getting out of school and growing one year older. So the next time you are in the grocery store buying your produce, think of it less like a chore and try to see it as a seasonal adventure. Discover new flavors and learn about your local farms and where they sell their fare. Get excited for the flavors and cherish them, knowing that you will not taste them again until the next season. To help you out a little, underneath this post is a link to a seasonal fruits and veggies chart. Give a look! You might be surprised to see what foods you are buying that are actually not in season at all. :)


Seasonal Fruits and Veggies Chart: http://www.cfaitc.org/OtherResources/Seasonal.php