What’s In: March
In this process of learning to understand and work with food better, I want to learn more about the how and where and when of food. Where and how are the things I eat grown? How are the animals whose meat, eggs, and other products I eat raised? When are different fruits and vegetables in season in my area? If I want to eat something out of season locally, where else would it come from?
I live in Vancouver, BC, a large city surrounded by ocean and suburbs in the Metro Vancouver area, and scattered with the occasional community garden. We have only one farm in Vancouver-proper, the UBC Farm, and it’s in danger of closing in the near future as UBC tries to develop every square foot it can into condos and townhouses. If you drive out of town, just past the suburbs, you start to come across farms, large and small, organic and industrial. If you keep going, into the Okanagan and other regions of BC, orchards and farms become even more common.
What’s in season really depends on what region you’re looking at. For the purposes of my posts on seasonal items, I’ll mostly be drawing from 100-mile diet resources and other locavore-type sites. Part of this is to speak only for my own experiences – I can’t vouch for what’s in season in London or Phoenix or Puerto Vallarta! More personally, though, I want to learn more about what I can do to support local farmers, producers, processors and distributors and the local economy, and to reduce my negative impact on my community. If I focus on what’s in season here, I can do that, and hopefully, find ways to adapt what we eat to match our local variations!
Here’s what the 100-mile diet suggests as in-season for BC in March:
- Apples
- Cucumbers (hot house)
- Hazelnuts
- Leeks
- Peppers (hot house)
- Potatoes
- Tomatoes (hot house)
So, of the 40 items this resource sheet tracks, that’s not a whole lot, especially if you choose to avoid hot house-grown veggies! I eat a lot of apples, though I’m not very creative with them – mostly eating slices plain or with cheese! We eat at least one cucumber a week, and hazelnuts on occasion. I’m not sure if I’ve EVER had a leek, though they always intrigue me at the grocery store! Peppers and tomatoes… yuck. I’m trying to acquire a taste for them, but it’s hard work. Potatoes aren’t used much in our house, but I’m not sure why – they’d be a good change of pace from rice, pasta or other starches.
But what about the other staples of my and our diet(s)? Bananas! Carrots! Broccoli (mmmmm broccoli)! Oranges! Strawberries! They’re either never grown in BC (bananas, for example), or out of season in March (carrots, for one).
This is going to be harder than I thought! But, the more I read and research, the more I’m convinced that I want to work seasonality and local resources into our diet. From the impacts on the environment to the changes in nutritional value during long transport and storage, I think the effort, sacrifices and education might just be worth it.
Whether we take on a challenge like a 100-mile diet or Fresh Mouth-month remains to be seen. I think if we were to do it, we would start during a month with more plentiful resources in BC – June through October have many more options than November – May. For now, I will read and learn and try new things, and we’ll just see what happens!
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