Eating Seasonally

Picture the scene. It’s a few days before Christmas and myself and my husband are in Home Bargains buying last minute ‘essentials’ for the festive break.  I need to get some of that brandy flavored white dessert sauce that we have with our Chistmas pudding and because it’s Christmas, I have to buy two cartons just in case one isn’t enough, even though one would be plenty because I forget from one year to the next that no one actually likes it.  And whilst most people are in Home Bargains doing that last minute sweep of the shops, knowing that they are about to close for two whole days over the festive period and heaven forbid that we might not have enough leftovers to throw away on Boxing day, I’m also in there for an entirely different reason altogether.

Judging by my experience on this from previous years,  I have a sneaking suspicion that just as the Christmas selection boxes are having their final days of glory on the shelves in most shops, Cadburys will pull the rug from under them, before Christmas Eve no less, by bringing out (in my opinion) the big guns in confectionery and on this day, I happened to be right.  Yes, it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to ….. (dramatic pause for drum roll and trumpets please)  …. the truly magificent Cadburys Mini Eggs accompanied by the totally fabulous Cadburys Creme Egg.  I’m giving them this fanfare here because for me this tremendous moment is actually more exciting than Christmas itself.

Yep that’s right, even though it’s only December and still very much the ‘Christmas Season’,  these precious things are now given pride of place on the shelves and it’s at this very time when I will purchase my first seasonal Easter confectionery products!  Oh the excitement I feel when I see them, it’s like greeting an old friend that you haven’t seen for months and just as you might comment to that friend on how well they look and how they haven’t changed a bit,  I too comment on how much weight these products have lost (the bags get smaller) and how svelte looking the creme eggs have become compared to last year and the year before that!  And despite the fact that the price gets higher for what seems to be less and less product, I will still buy several packets of mini eggs and half a dozen creme eggs in a frenzy of excitement because this gives me hope that spring is coming and this is all before i’ve eaten my christmas pudding with the brandy sauce that no one likes!

Eating that first Creme Egg after months of being parted from them just tastes like the best thing on earth and never mind  asking ‘how do you eat yours?’,  we just scoff the lot during the christmas break and then buy more in January because I know that by Good Friday you will not be able to find a single packet left in the shops.  These products will soon be replaced by ‘Fathers Day’ merchandise closely followed by ‘Back to School’ stuff even before the poor kids have even had a whiff of the six weeks holidays.

No wonder it feels like life is flashing before me, it appears that these days retailers pay no attention or respect to the seasons of the year. Talk about messing with your head – is it any wonder why I struggle to even know what day it is?

So finally getting to the point of this blog, I’ve previously written about my experience of wanting to become more Ayurvedic,  however,  it’s not that easy because I can’t realistically commit to some of the do’s and don’ts on this path – like for example, no coffee and the whole massage your head with oil rituals to name just a few (see previous blog on my experiences of Ayurveda).

However, the one thing that i’m becoming more convinced of, is the Ayurvedic principle of being more in tune with how our body and mind feels as the seasons change by connecting to the natural rhythms of nature and I wanted to see if someone fadulous like me could do it and if it would help me get through the dreaded winter. 

So the one thing that I was really keen to try as the clocks went back in 2021 was to start eating seasonally.    This meant that in principle, I would only be buying and eating what could be grown locally and not imported from warmer climates. I did a bit of research on this and I found some really useful information on the Holland and Barrett website (listed below) that explains the benefits along with a month by month list of what was in season. 

Eating Seasonal foods -seasonal fruits & vegetable benefits

So for example here in the UK it’s still technically winter at the time of writing and we should be eating vegetables like spring greens, cabbages, broccoli,  leeks, parsnips, swede etc – so basically soup!  And since Ayurveda advocates that you eat more cooked/warm food to spark your digestive fire,  I was in luck with this season because these  types of vegetables are not really designed to be eaten raw unlike salad veg that grows in the summer.  

During winter, it’s supposed to be a time to draw in and hibernate to help us to survive the cold darker months and eating seasonal warm nourishing food helps to do this and it aids our digestion.  This is what our ancestors would have done but because we can rely on imported foods all year round now, things like tomatoes, cucumber and strawberries, foods that are more juicy and hydrated which are perfect for those long warmer days, but not for winter, our bodies become confused.   This was the reason why I was convinced that I used to get the gripes in autumn and why I really wanted to change my eating habits as the season changed to see if it would help.

Not only that though, eating seasonally is also more sustainable and as someone who has been worried about climate change ever since learning about the hole in the ozone layer as a child in the early 90’s, I also felt that it was time to stop buying Pink Ladies that had flown all the way from New Zealand when there were a enough English apples in the shops to choose from here.

Now i’m a person who always strives to eat my 5 a day of fruit and veg, although some days I do better than others.  I do a lot of cooking from scratch and use mainly fresh ingredients and I also batch cook meals to keep in the freezer.  However, when I started to eat seasonally, I realized that my choices had become a bit more limited, particularly in the fruit aisle of Aldi.  It seemed that for a long time over the winter I could only eat apples and pears, goodbye to things like strawberries, mango and melons!  Roll on May though when I can start buying Rhubarb and believe me i’m so excited for the change!

At the time of writing, it’s now early March and you can start to get a sense that the Wheel of the Year is turning, we are starting to leave the darker days behind us and it’s getting lighter, the birds are singing, the daffodils are flowering and I can just tell that my body is starting to get a bit bored now of our traditional, seasonal UK winter heavy hot meals.  Besides that,  I’m getting tired of chopping vegetables,  do you know how hard it is to chop a swede?  I’m also getting a bit sick of smelling of fried onions so I confess that we’ve had a salad with a Jacket potato recently, but I’m proud to say that for someone who doesn’t generally stick to things, I have managed to do this with the occasional odd exception.

So what have been the benefits of me eating seasonally?  Has it saved me money?  Well yes it definitely has because it’s meant that i’ve bought less for a start.  I recently saw a photo on facebook that someone had taken of their Vegetable drawer in their fridge on which they had posted a sign saying ‘Hospice for Vegetables’.   This made me smile because it’s so true, this is often the place where we place our poor vegetables to die.

It’s easy to get enticed by all the fresh, colourful looking veg in the supermarket  so we buy it and we have good intentions to eat it all and be all healthy.  But in reality it takes time to prepare and cook it so unless you really plan your meals and have the time to cook, it’s  often all too easy just to whack a frozen pizza in the oven when you come home from work knackered because that’s all you have the energy for and the kids hate vegetables anyway.  So unfortunately, things like the mange tout, the baby corn and the asparagus that were all desirable in the shops are now sitting there in the fridge, slowly rotting and that’s also a good few quid thrown down the drain too.

In my household we are usually quite good at eating our vegetables, it’s our fruit bowl that is normally the ‘hospice’ in our kitchen.  I’ve lost count of how many bananas i’ve bought over the years which start off being a firm greeny yellow but slowly become a donkey brown colour and once the fruit flies appear you know that it’s curtains for them and whatever else is in there.  I ease my guilt by putting them in the compost bin, safe in the knowledge that my flower beds will really benefit from potassium eventually.  I’ve now stopped buying bananas so the ‘hospice’ is only for apples at the moment!

Has eating seasonally improved my health?  Yes I think I can tick that one off too.  I haven’t suffered with my digestive woes that I can be prone to and because the food is not traveling long distances over time, it’s got to be fresher and therefore have more nutrients for us to absorb which has got to be another win.

However, the added benefit of eating in tune with the seasons for me so far is that it has helped me to be more present and mindful.  I never thought that I would ever say this because I spend most of my life being busy on autopilot and that’s a hard habit to break,  so at least when i’m walking round the supermarket now it means that I have to stop and think about what I’m going to be eating and it’s made me pay more attention to where the produce has come from.   

So the big question now is, am I going to continue doing this? Absolutely yes – but now that i’ve become a bit of a convert to eating seasonally, will I stop buying Easter Confectionery in December?  The answer to that is absolutely not – but I might at least finish the tub of Christmas Quality Street off first out of a mark of respect.