what's in season?

Autumn is here. The tomato vines in our vegie garden are feeling the beat of the rain falling hard on them today. I plucked the last of the cherry tomatoes yesterday and we have gone from giving away bags of them, to treasuring each of the last ones as if they’re rare and precious gems.

I stopped at the local farm this morning and filled my eco-bag with parsnips, potatoes, onions, eggs, coriander and ginger. Pete pulled a pumpkin from our garden that will be chopped up and added to a pot to meet with the ingredients from the farm (minus the eggs) and become pumpkin soup. I love chopped fresh  coriander scattered across pumpkin soup.

This morning on his way out the door Pete requested more dahl, so I’ll make a pot of that too another good match with the coriander.

And with so much silverbeet in the garden my version of quiche is on the ‘to cook’ list this afternoon. I never use cream to make a quiche it’s too rich for me, I’ll use some fetta and ricotta and post the recipe and photos here another time soon.

Back to celebrating autumn. I like to honour the change of seasons. It is one simple way to reconnect or stay connected with nature. After 5 years of being part of the Steiner community here on the Peninsula, the honouring of the seasons was something I enjoyed about the Steiner philosophy (I’m by no means a strict follower of all the Steiner ways, but taking River to Steiner playgroup and kinder was a perfect way for me to meet like minded folk).

A simple way to acknowledge the seasons is to have a nature table in your home decorated in the colours of the season and with some of nature’s treasures, the most obvious one for autumn of course being leaves in all their varying colours. And perhaps some fruits and vegetables of the season.

Autumn is the season for these fruits and vegetables...

This list is a compilation from here , here and here .

Fruit

Apples, bananas, pears, Valencia oranges, figs, grapes, melons and strawberries.

Vegetables

Beans, beetroot, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, capsicum, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chillies, corn, cucumber, eggplant, leeks, onions, parsnip, peas, potato, pumpkin, silverbeet, spinach, squash, sweet potatoes, turnips and zucchini.

On this rainy afternoon a crafty idea to do with children (or for grown-ups feeling arty) is to make a seasonal produce poster and stick on your fridge. Write or print out the list of fruit and veg in season then cut out pictures of fruit and veg from magazines or draw and colour them in.

For further seasonal produce information and inspiration visit The Melbourne Foodie, The Foodies’ Diary. The Foodies’ Diary takes over from The Seasonal Produce Diary the first one written by renowned Melbourne chefs and food writers Alan Campion and Michele Curtis.