Sensing the Seasons - A testament to the nurturing benefits of eating seasonally
2nd August 2020
With a background in academia, Holly Letch’s fascination with food and sustainability pulled her into the world of restaurants, working with seasonal produce, local suppliers and natural wine.
During lockdown she has spent time working on a regenerative farm in Cambridgeshire to pursue her desire to work with the land more directly.
Summer’s fertile abundance feels somewhat displaced as we move through this groundhog-day- like passage of time that 2020 has become. However, as our lives warp and adopt an alternative pace, plants continue to flower and fruits continue to ripen. Since coronavirus proliferated, the seasons have shifted and it feels somewhat of a surprise to see the reassuring presence of strawberries, raspberries, melons and tomatoes. This produce, so deeply associated with the joys of summer, feels incongruous in the current times with the narrative of supermarket queues and empty shelves ever more present.
With the shopping culture of coronavirus highlighting our fixation with online orders and supermarket sweeps, any inch of seasonal produce blends into a background of static supermarket monotony. These experiences focus on calories, price-cuts, value and quantity and what gets lost and undermined is the innate and compelling sense that is taste. There is little that can beat the tactile experience of handling robust beef tomatoes in the hot sun with the scent of the vines lingering on hands all afternoon. Or the smell that arrives when you take the first slice of a honeydew melon, carefully selected for the aroma of its skin, the flesh yielding a more concentrated nectar taking one’s mind somewhere more Mediterranean. Or the joyful task of podding fresh peas, each burst of the pod releasing a vegetal reminder that summer is on the approach.
Image @holly.letch
These sensory experiences which evoke memories and embed flavour in our minds are the product of eating seasonally and understanding produce at its peak. Food that is eaten out of season, or flown miles across the world, loses the joy of scent and fundamentally flavour. The curious case of the supermarket peach bought in November which fails to yield flavour or any apparent ripeness, unsurprisingly has likely been grown in irrigated heated polytunnels untouched by sun, wind, rain and drought and therefore devoid of natural character. Yet still, the sad plastic coated cucumber, firm avocado and limp lettuce find their way into our deemed ‘healthy’ shopping basket.
If the pure delight in the sweet crunch of a cox apple with just enough acidity to make your lips purse, is not enough to make the case for seasonality, then the argument strengthens with the fact that produce eaten in season and close to the picking date is far higher in nutritional content. With our health being of such great significance during current times, surely eating food in its prime physical state so our own bodies can harness this positive energy is convincing enough? Yet, it’s still all too easy to get your hands on asparagus flown from Peru all year round, forgetting that from April to June it is asparagus season in the UK, giving two joyful months for the spears to be cherished and celebrated while supporting local farmers and costing far fewer carbon emissions.
With summer in full swing, the temporal excitement of seasonal produce reaches its epitome with the British culture of fruit picking. Now lockdown eases, farms across the country have opened their gates to the wonder of ‘pick your own’. The rows of ripening fruit become playgrounds for
berry-eyed individuals filling baskets and bellies with the best of that month, from strawberries and gooseberries in June to white, black and redcurrants in late summer. Particularly evocative of childhood memories of faces stained shades of purple, these experiences rouse the infantile glory of finding the most carmine red strawberry nestled under the leaves or a pristine bunch of polished redcurrants delicately hanging.
In a similar vein, the experiences of buying produce at farmers markets or through local suppliers engages us with produce and people, whilst working in alignment with seasonal availability which can often be more cost effective. The physical act of pick your own or venturing to the Saturday morning farmers market forces us to smell, feel and taste the seasons and move away from our convenience-centric relationship with supermarkets. The result is a basket full of fresh produce which requires creativity and a mindful approach to cook up something that is ultimately far more gratifying for our minds and mouths.
In the quest to shop more seasonally, here are some London-centric recommendations still supplying through coronavirus:
• Veg-box schemes - such as Growing Communities, Sutton Community Farm and Flourish
• Growing Communities Farmers Market - Stoke Newington High Street, Hackney
• Spa Terminus Market - Dockley Road Industrial Estate, Bermondsey
• Leila’s Shop - Calvert Avenue, Shoreditch
• Natoora - in shops across London
• Fruit picking - Maynards in Sussex, Parkside in Enfield and so many more!
To put the produce to work here are cookbooks that focus particularly on changes in season:
• Fern Verrow - Harry Astley and Jane Scotter
• Week in Week Out - Simon Hopkinson
• Five Seasons of Jam - Lillie O'Brien
• A Change of Appetite - Diana Henry
• A Modern Way to Eat - Anna Jones
Follow Holly’s adventures in food over on her Instagram - @holly.letch