A Practical Way to Live Cyclically or An Impossible Task?

The dream and the frustration of seasonal eating

Kale and strawberries I recently frozen for the winter. It took basically two days.

I’ve been trying to consider what’s an easy entry point when it comes to living cyclically. The first thing that comes to mind is the classic, the thing I’ve been trying to do for years before I even cared about cycles: eating with the seasons. Eating what is currently growing in my area, potentially preserving what I can for when the season changes, and buying less from the big grocery stores.

But gosh, is it hard.

Now, I have more time on my hands to do this and, honestly, more money. Buying, preparing, and preserving good quality, local food does take more resources than the ways of eating we’ve become accustomed to. Now, I have those resources. Yet it’s still a challenge and I’m far from where I want to be.

One issue is that I no longer like to cook.

I did, before. Cooking used to be one of my things. Amongst family and friends, I was sort of known as a Person Who Cooked, and, honestly, cooked well. I had a baking phase and, again, the cakes I made were talked about—I even made a tiny wedding cake for tiny wedding (that got featured on A Practical Wedding!¹). Cooking together was how my husband, T, and I got together at ages eighteen and twenty.

All that to say, cooking was kind of part of my identity.

Then I got sick for several years and eating became torture. No food was safe. Even something that had treated my stomach kindly one week could wreak havoc the next. This really takes the joy out of food. Every meal turns into an opportunity to potentially feel awful, and my eating became quite restrictive (partly, mistakenly, encouraged by practitioners). Several years of this, plus some increased sensory issues and chronic fatigue, and cooking became stressful.

We’re at the point now where T cooks pretty much all of our meals. But I want to find joy in a food and cooking again. Seasonal eating seems to be a way into this.

The other issue is that seasonal eating and the preservation of food is such a huge, under valued shift.

Gardening, picking and preserving food could pretty much be a full time job at certain times of the season. Where I live, that season is just beginning. This week I’m going to pick cherries from a local orchard to freeze (hopefully!). Plus I’ll also steam and freeze a small mountain of kale. I’m guessing it will probably take me the bulk of two days, maybe three. But I also have to reorganize my freezer to fit all of this, weed the garden, and I’d really like to go blueberry and other berry picking too. If I want to go pick local, organic berries I have to drive about a hour to a farm in the next state over. That’s the only option around here. So I have to weight: local or drive to get organic? That’s to say nothing of making sure we use all the produce we bought from market. And I need to finally get to a local farm store to check out their selection of raw, local dairy…

Mountain of kale, eight quarts of local strawberries, frozen in early June.

All this work, which has very little value in our culture—like much of the work that has been relegated as “women’s work” since the 15th or 16th century.² No one will be paying me for it, though it might save us money in the long term. But a lot of people wouldn’t understand if I told them I consider this not an extra little project, or a hobby, but important, integral work that contributes as much to our household as my husband’s wage-earning work. If someone asked me what I “do” I know I’d get funny looks from someone people if I said: “I keep my home, tend my garden, and work on our food preservation.” I feel reasonably sure some people would reply, “Ok…but what do you do for work?”

Honestly, I still grapple with this in my own brain. I feel a cultural pressure to not see this work as meaningful.

When I clear away the noise, I can feel in my bones how important this work is. It no longer comes easily, and I don’t have the support of cultural tradition or societal/capitalist value. But pushing myself to cook again, to find joy in food, and to work towards feeding our household in a way that respects the seasons, the land, and the local community feels essential.

And I also feel that any contribution to this matters. We don’t eat 100% local right now. I’m not sure we eat 50%. I don’t like how much we depend on the chain grocery stores in our town, where we have gotten food poisoning from some produce and others of it are sprayed with bleach. Meat and cheese we seldom get local. So we’re far off from where I want to be. And yet, I try to remind myself, all the small ways we put our resources (money, and otherwise) into a different way of feeding ourselves are a step closer.

Now of course, eating seasonally is not even the only way to eat by a cyclical model. What immediately comes to mind is eating with the seasons of the menstrual cycles. Different amounts of nutrients and different energetics of food are said to be desirable at different times. I’ve tried eating this way and it does feel nourishing. That’s just one way. I suppose there could be other ways to eat cyclically…maybe with the circadian rhythm or even the moon cycles.

Seasonal Eating Scenarios for Wherever You Find Yourself

I’ve put together a list of ideas for eating seasonally. This is not a ranking. I have sort of lightly organized these ideas from times when you don’t have many resources to devote to eating seasonally and times when you do. Multiple of these scenarios could be experienced within a year and all are equally nourishing.

• Read (paper, digital or audio) books to learn more about vegetable families³, cooking, eating locally, meat production (if you partake), etc. I have a small list of some of my favorites below. Also consider podcasts (which I have zero recommendations for so please share ideas if you have them!).

• Educate yourself about what would currently be in season in your area, regardless of whether there’s a local market or farm stand. Try to gain an awareness and respect for what the land around you might produce.

• Read books that aren’t cookbooks but might inspire you to think about food, food systems, farming, and cooking differently. Maybe Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, We Are What We Eat by Alice Waters, The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball, or Farming While Black by Leah Penniman.

• Find a single recipe that looks enticing to you that includes in season produce. If you don’t have access to a farmers market or farm stand, go to the grocery store, get the ingredients that are or could be growing in your area and cook one meal to familiarize yourself with this produce. It’s ok it wasn’t local. Respect what could.

• What flavors do you enjoy? Find an herb that you love to eat (basil and mint are two good ones) and buy a small plant from wherever is available to you. Sometimes you can get whole plants in the grocery store. Plant it. Tend it. And cook with it.

• Investigate sources of local produce in your area. Are there farmers markets, farm stands, small farms with community supported agriculture programs? Sometimes even grocery store chains will carry local produce (though “local” can be a broad definition).

• Try preserving something simple, like freezing some local berries for the winter months. They can just go on a baking sheet in the freezer once cleaned, and once frozen you can toss them in ziplock bags, Stasher bags or glass jars.

• Try going to a local farmers market or stand whenever possible. Browse! Look! Enjoy! Talk to farmers. Prioritize connection with the growers and what they grow rather than buying a certain amount of local produce.

• Preserve something you made yourself, like basil pesto which freezes easily.

• See how much of your produce shopping you can do at a local farmers market or stand during the season. Maybe challenge yourself to buy as much as locally as you can for a week or a month.

• Grow your own herbs, a tomato plant or edible flowers.

• Start thinking about the next season. What will be in season then? What would you like to save from this season, to enjoy later? Maybe stock up on apples and pears in the fall and find a cool, dry place to store them. Sweet potatoes also store well. Or get large jars of honey from a local market that closes over the winter.

• Investigate sources of local eggs, meat and dairy, if those are things you partake of. Do you have that around you? What are their practices?

• Purchase a CSA share from a local farm and challenge yourself to cook with only that during the season.

• Purchase most of your produce locally while it’s in season, fill in with grocery store. Preserve what you can. Pick your own berries. Maybe purchase half a cow to freeze.

• What local sweeteners are available to you? If you travel during the summer, can you stock up on locally produced sweeteners in that area (I’m thinking maple syrup and sugar from New England). Be sure to purchase from locally based companies to support the local economy.

• Keep a garden and preserve as much as you can from it to take you through the winter.

• See how much you can transition to eating local meat, dairy, and eggs.

• Is there a local mill in your area? Can you get local grains? Or see if there’s a small local market where you can buy organic grains in bulk, so that you’re supporting a local business even if the grain is from elsewhere.

• And what feels like the ultimate to me: have your own egg-laying birds, animals for milk and/or meat, keep a large garden. Essentially, a homestead. Spend lots of time filling freezers and shelves with food you’ve “put up” for the cooler months. Have cold frames for growing greens through the winter. Tap maple trees if you’ve got ‘em. Keep bees. Buy from and trade with other local producers. Forage herbs and medicinal plants. Fish. Grow some of your own wheat. Etc, etc. In short, the dream…

Where am I right now?

Right now, I’m trying to recover my love for being in the kitchen and see food as nourishing again. Plus also freeze as much as I can so that we don’t have to rely solely on poor quality and sometimes downright dangerous grocery store produce. Though canning is a traditional way to preserve food, I know that’s not happening this year because I haven’t conquered my fear of it. I’m hoping to fill our current freezer and get another one before November.

Thanks to T, we have multiple gardens, including six raised beds. If nothing else, we have an absurd amount of kale and chard. There’s a wonderful farmers market an eight minute walk from our house (and we will never not be grateful for it). There are also local butchers, egg producers, and orchards all around us. We’re incredibly privileged in terms of our access to local, in season food.

And still, the transition is difficult. While I was brainstorming this essay I was chopping brussel sprouts to roast—brussel sprouts are decidedly not in season where I live. But I did not food preservation last year and I need some diversity in my diet.

Finding joy in this is still so difficult for me. Reader

Kelsey Campbell-Dunn

recently shared that she’s reading We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto by Alice Waters. It was an interesting reminder. Alice Waters’ work greatly influenced me as a college student. I wanted to work on one of her “edible schoolyards” and even watched the movie from which her restaurant’s name Chez Panisse comes from. Man, did I want to go to Chez Panisse. So I think I may have to get a copy of that book myself.

I often think about something a farmer I used to work for said that really hit me as someone with a lot of worries. He said something like: if you can grow your own food, what do you have to worry about? You’re fed. You’re alive.

Now, in retrospect, he may have been slightly stoned when he said this, but I think he was onto something. If you can grow your food, the most essential thing in your hands.

Do you have ideas to add to the above list? Please share! ✍️

🥕Do you eat seasonally? How do you do it?!

🥒Do you want to eat seasonally? What is it that makes it difficult?

🍓Do you eat seasonally sometimes? Does that feel joyful? Does it feel like a chore?

Come tell me in the comments! I want to know!

Resource list

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Vegetable Literacy by Deborah Madison

Cooking with Scraps by Lindsay-Jean Hard

Freeze Fresh by Crystal Schmidt

Dishing Up the Dirt by Andrea Bemis

Simply In Season by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert

The Souix Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman and Beth Dooley

The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dorenburg

An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler⁴

Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

1. Sadly, the photographer left before my cake came out. But the flowers were done by a dear, talented friend. https://apracticalwedding.com/brasenhill-mansion-wedding/

2. Sylvia Federici writes about this in her book Caliban and the Witch, which I’m reading now.

3. Deborah Madison’s book Vegetable Literacy is great for this, thought to be honest her recipes feel clunky. I’ve never actually cooked anything from this book. I love the plant family info though.

4. The first gift I gave to my now-husband before we were even dating. So we have two copies in this house.