Calling all Locavores!

(that's folks who eat local foods, ya-all)

Hello and welcome to SeasonalEating.net, my blog about creative preparation and enjoyment of local foods in season. I’ll be exploring ideas for making foods that are both healthy and delicious, recreating old family recipes, and working with the challenge of sticking to a weekly meal plan while allowing enough flexibility to enjoy spontaneous unplanned meals. This blog is for everyone who wants to eat local foods and/or get more organized and creative in the kitchen. It’s for people who want to explore a variety of recipes and have fun making them. It will also deal with the specific challenges that CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture) members and gardeners like myself face.

As a CSA farm shareholder, I’m committed to eating locally, but what to do with the weekly veggies in the box requires an open mind, a bit of skill, and recipes! Some vegetables are easy to use, but some are completely unfamiliar, while others arrive week after week after week. These “challenge” veggies require some ingenuity to use and enjoy, but that’s where the exploration and fun come in. This is a forum to exchange recipes and meal plans with other CSA members, home gardeners, farmers' market enthusiasts, and anyone who wants to use more fresh ingredients in cooking. Other discussion topics include food preservation and anything that lessens the impact of food transportation on our planet, hones our improvisational skills in the kitchen, and most importantly anything that facilitates easy healthful meals.

My areas of interest and focus are:

Your ideas and recipes: I’m not an expert a meal planner yet, so let’s work together! What would YOU do with my veggies, or better yet, what are you doing with yours, so we can inspire one another? How do you tweak my recipes to your own tastes?

Seasonal Local Foods: Preparing and eating foods from local sources in season is what it's all about!

Improvisational cooking: Getting creative with bounty crops and strange vegetables, adding new twists to old recipes, experimenting in the kitchen, improving recipes that didn’t quite work, etc.

Simplifying: Making good recipes that take less time, create less mess, and consume less energy, both personal and planetary. Your input in this area is welcome and appreciated!

Healthful deliciousness: Making traditional and family recipes more healthful without compromising taste by bumping up whole ingredients and reducing fat.

Whole foods: Cooking primarily with healthful, ingredients, ideally without preservatives and added chemicals. I am interested in all health-through-food topics, including both physical and emotional health.

Occasional Treats: I’ve always been into baking, so you'll find plenty of dessert recipes here, sometimes with fresh fruit, other times old family favorites.

Grow your Own: I’m interested in backyard gardens and gardeners. Home gardening creates the ultimate locavore diet. So far most of my herbs and veggies are in containers. What kind of crops do you grow?

Sustainability: Finding out and sharing information about sustainable sources for seafood, meats, and other foods as well as fruits and veggies.

Now let’s get cooking!