Eating healthily and seasonally

[Breathmiller]

My youngest son and I have a terrible sweet tooth and he was talking non stop about cakes and chocolate today. We decided that what we talk about encourages us to want it so we started talking about what healthy foods were seasonal just now to also be more in tune with nature and help with the environment re food miles from growing to our plate.

So we looked up what is in season for the UK at this time of year as inspiration. i.e - what we feed our minds with = we are more likely to want to eat. Which worked because we raided the fridge and fruit bowl and had a really tasty late breakfast

It made me think that a thread to inspire might be a good idea?

This is what the vegetarian Society has for November...

November
Apples, Beetroot, Brussels Sprouts, Butternut Squash, Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Celeriac, Celery, Chestnuts, Chicory, Cranberries, Elderberries, Jerusalem Artichokes, Kale, Leeks, Onions, Parsnips, Pears, Potatoes, Pumpkin, Swede, Swiss Chard, Turnips, Watercress, Wild Mushrooms, Winter Squash.

So for lunch I'm going to roast some beetroot, onions, and carrots and maybe some diced potatoes because i have these all in at the moment. I'll also add in garlic and rosemary from the garden.

I love butternut squash so will buy one and make butternut squash soup.

I've been really craving cauliflower cheese so will add that to the list.

Any other ideas to use our locally grown (as much as we can get locally) UK seasonal foods?

I wont be doing it exclusively but want to up my intake of veg for health and local for the environment.

@Breathmiller here's the recipe I've used for more than a decade: www.allrecipes.com/recipe/21205/all-day-apple-butter/. It's extremely flexible and you can play it by ear in terms of quantities and mixes and of apples vs. pears.

Instead of using 4 cups of sugar, I only use about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of sugar, that's it. I also add lots more cinnamon and cloves.

Depending on how large the batch is, I can fill between 12 to 16 8-oz Ball jars like these www.freshpreserving.com/ball-regular-mouth-half-pint-8-oz.-glass-mason-jars-with-lids-and-bands-12-count-1033887VM.html. I don't even bother "preserving" or properly canning them. The apple butter lasts for months in the fridge as is and sometimes I give it as Xmas presents.

Once I had too much leftover after pouring into jars, and made an apple-pear butter pie for a Thanksgiving dessert to take to a friend's house. It was like a substitute for pumpkin pie. I mixed a couple of jars' worth with eggs and unsweetened condensed milk, poured it into a pie shell and baked it for about 30 min I think. Everybody loved it!

Just to add, for the last step, I purée it with an immersion blender to smoothen it. I do leave a few chunks in the mixture though for nice texture.

@quirkychick I've just looked up Calde Verde . It looks amazing. I believe there is a veggie version of chorizo but I've never had it and it might be an awful substitite but I'm so keen to try the recipe I'm willing to give it a go. And I'll make the real version for the meat eaters in the house

Great idea for a thread, I’m veggie too (are you and ds veggie?)

Apples as well as just eating straight also nice dipped in peanut butter or eaten with good mature cheese on crackers

Beetroot - love this, as well as roasted also works in cakes (sorry 😂), dips and soups

Brussels Sprouts - I’m not a fan but will eat at a push, funnily enough one time I did like was when someone I knew gave me pan fried with chestnuts, another item on the list.

Butternut Squash - work great in curries, soups, stews and casseroles, can also be used as an alternative to or mixed in with mash in pie toppings

Cabbage - love! As well as usual steamed/boiled side dish (which is admittedly a bit boring) it’s also great in stir fries, noodle dishes, stews and casseroles

Carrots - also good in stir fries etc as for cabbage and with/instead of mashed potato (I’ve a Dd who hates potato I’ve spent years finding alternatives for certain dishes)

Cauliflower - apparently nice as a rice sub but I’ve never tried that. Works in loads inc stir fries, curries, stews, casseroles, pies, soups...

Celeriac - never had this weirdly enough

Celery - LOVE this - so much so that if it makes it into a Cooked dish in this house it’s a miracle 😂 I love it as a crudités dipped in usual dips houmous, sour cream etc but also again yummy dipped in peanut butter

Chestnuts - make a great veggie pate, also great in stir fries, curries, stews and similar

Chicory - never had this either

Cranberries - great with yogurt or sour cream, in apple pies, stewed with custard etc

Elderberries - never used

Jerusalem Artichokes - have eaten outside of home but never cooked with

Kale - LOVE this another that will go in almost anything, soups, stir fries, curries, stews, crisped up in oven with a little garlic salt over...

Leeks - basis of many recipes especially italian, again very versatile I most like it in a creamy potato and leak filo pie

Onions

Parsnips - I like these roasted best preferably with a little drizzle of honey

Pears - don’t like pears

Potatoes - dd hates which means I’m now kinda obsessed! As well as the usual ways used in Uk I love several European recipes like kartoffelpuffer, Rosti, duchesse, gnocchi, Pommes Anna, but my favourite is dauphinoise

Pumpkin - funnily enough not yet tried but I think as I like butternut squash I think I’d like

Swede - hmm is this what the English call swede? What Scots call neeps? If so then I like it best mashed with black pepper and a little salt

Swiss Chard not familiar with

Turnips if the white turnip I’m not used to cooking with it

Watercress - love in sandwiches, salads and soups

Wild Mushrooms I love mushrooms, work best in stir fries and creamy dishes and pasta dishes I think

Winter Squash again not familiar

Breathmiller I used to be veggie and made a veggie version of Caldo Verde with whole garlic cloves that you mash up at the end to make the whole soup delicious and garlicky. There's a vegetarian [[https://food52.com/recipes/25033-vegetarian-caldo-verde]]. Annie Bell has a delicious double celery soup, which is with celery and celeriac and blended up, I'm having trouble finding it online, but it's basically fried off onion, celery until soft, add celeriac until soft, add white wine and reduce, add vegetable stock and cook for 15 mins, season and blend.

Mushrooms fried up with chopped walnuts are delicious, great on salad leaves with balsamic vinegar for a lunch or as a side dish. I used to do a mushroom, leek and lentil veggie shepherd pie, you could also add cauliflower or celeriac mash to that as a topping instead of potatoes. I'm no longer veggie, but still eat loads of vegetables, yum, yum.

I'll try that link again food52.com/recipes/25033-vegetarian-caldo-verde

@Graphista
I'm vegetarian, tap into vegan now and again but I'm also wheat free as I'm intolerant so it makes the restrictions with being vegan harder.
I have 4 kids. Oldest adult Dd is a veggie and younger Dd eats mostly veggie. My two younger sons at home and DH are meat eaters. To make things more complicated my DH is very lactose intolerant. So we have an interesting take on shared meal times. But we seem to manage.

I am Scottish and call the bigger orange fleshed root veg, turnip or neeps. And I think of the smaller white ones as swedes, which I have always thought of as more common in England?

I'm also finding out that sweet chestnuts aren't as prevalent up here to forage for. Which makes sense as I've only ever found horse chestnuts for conkers.

And @Graphista . Great list of all these ideas

Thanks @quirkychick. I love the look of it. I am just back from trekking in Nepal and they had garlic soup everywhere which is supposed to be good for altitude. So I might go a really garlicky version of Calde Verde.

Lovely thread!

I often have good intentions to eat more veg and cook more of it for the DC, but find the prepping tedious, and soup a lot of effort.

Squash is v nice in curries.

@Loopytiles
I hear you. It's so much easier these days to get something quicker.
Hence the thread. I though mt if we talked about all these delicious things enough then we would be craving them so much we wouldn't mind the prep. That's my theory anyway

I make soup in batches. So a soup that is blended can be put in the freezer in portion sizes and other soups that don't freeze well, we just eat over a few days. It does help without having to make soup every day.

I often prepare extra veg that can be used the next day in something else. Most soups and curries freeze well, as does red cabbage and apple. If I make red cabbage coleslaw I make a big bowl to last a couple of days to make up for the preparation time. Not many people like mushrooms in our house, so I fried off loads and froze what I didn't need, so I can add them to things later. I use a slow cooker a lot, so things are ready later, good for curries, soups chilli.

Will try lots of these ideas, yum

Delicious thread breathmiller. I love Swiss chard (like spinach but nicer *Graphista) but I only had it regularly when I had a veg box. I must try some of the recipes suggested here. I am bad at menu planning so this is just the nudge I need. Thanks everyone.

Celeriac is celery-like in flavour but not as strong.
Swiss chard is good. Like an earthier-tasting firmer spinach.
Chicory has a nice flavour but is quite delicate.
Pumpkin is a bit like a sweet butternut squash. Winter squashes are usually a bit more interesting than butternut squash. I like marrow too but they tend to be watery and a bit flavourless.
Swedes are the large orangey fleshed root veg, turnips are the small white ones. Both are ok.
It's worth trying things like kohl rabi too but they're not that exciting.

Swiss chard is really nice, I usually fry up the stalks and then add the leaves to wilt. They have it in Tesco atm. The rainbow chard is really pretty.

I like both turnip and swede, they are nice raw, crunchy or cooked, great in stews or soups. Turnip has more flavour raw, mashed with butter us good too.

Going to do scotch broth this weekend, with turkey as that’s how my mother always did it.

And apple/blackberry crumble! Blackberries in freezer.

@Breathmiller the cauliflower cheese soup recipe is a Nick Nairn one:

sososimple.blogspot.com/2010/08/cauliflower-cheese-soup-lemon-posset.html

Swiss chard is easy to grow and if you get the Rainbow Light seeds, looks lovely in a border or a pot. Brilliant as a cut and come again veg and less likely to bolt than spinach.

@RaymondStopThat thanks. That looks delicious.

I'm now intrigued about local differences between what's called a turnip and what's a swede. I'm in Scotland and always known turnip to be the larger orange fleshed one and we didn't even have the little white ones as i grew up.
Haggis tatties and neeps were a staple of Burns night. And we even carved turnip lanterns long before pumpkins came on the scene for Halloween. But they were never called swedes and they were large and orange. Some people still choose to carve a turnip lantern up here. I had a fab one as a kid once that was a huge double headed turnip. It took my mum hours to hack out the centre. But it won the prize at Brownies. (Proud moment )

Haaa!! I have just googled. And apparently it is a hot topic! And a true North/South divide.
But it seems that officially a turnip is a swede and a swede is indeed a turnip! My wee Scottish brain is fried!!
I'm nearly 50 and my turnip world has been turned upside down.
(I'll still talk about turnips and neeps though) i cant imagine asking of anyone wants 'swede' for dinner. Would just be wrong.

Sorry I meant to reply and say thank you for all the squash recipe suggestions - thought I had but obviously I haven't. Definitely gojng to try them, thank you.

Breathmiller, I think it's a Scottish/not-Scottish thing rather than North/South

We were away from home for a few days this week so I currently have a pan of soup on the hob with all the odds and ends of veg that have been languishing in the fridge and look a bit tired - onions, carrots, a bit of swede, squash, courgette and garlic. I also chopped the thick stalk of some broccoli and added that.

If you do mange to procure some apples, make bircher muesli : add grated apple to oats, soak overnight in water then add yogurt in the morning and any nuts and seeds you like. I also add cinnamon and nutmeg. Stewed fruit is also great on porridge these cold mornings.

I think the turnip/swede thing is also north east UK. I'm originally a southerner and for me a swede is larger and orange, a turnip is smaller and white. Both yummy.

I have just done a tray bake to accompany lunch today. Courgettes (could substitute squash of your choice), onions and apples with thyme, olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. Very delicious and easy.