Picked up my first vegie box from Food Connect Sydney today! It has fresh silverbeet, onions, broccoli, beetroot, pak choy, potatoes, tomatoes, cos lettuce, oranges and pink lady apples. Everything smells ripe and juicy. I had a munch on a carrot and it reminded me of growing up on the farm and our homegrown vegies. Such a different taste to supermarket bagged carrots!
Food Connect provides fresh produce from local producers and is mostly organic. There are a few imperfect marks and spots but this is REAL food!
Cooking and eating produce that is in season is the perfect way to eat local, support local farmers and enjoy variety in your diet. Once you stop buying out of season foods you will rejoice as a new food comes into season and appreciate the yearly cycle.
If you buy produce which is not in season, it is likely to have been grown artificially in hot houses, picked prematurely or transported long distances and depleted of some of its nutrients. When fruit and vegetables are eaten in season they can contain a higher phytochemical content and more nutrients.
There are plenty of winter fruits and vegetables in abundant supply this month. Make the most of the fresh citrus fruits which can be used in salads, marinades, grilled with fish, chicken & meat, as well as eaten fresh.
There are a few unusual vegetables around in winter, such as Jerusalem artichokes, kohlrabi, celeriac, broccoflower, swedes, turnips and witlof. I’m going to go through my cookbooks and online and look for some recipes with some of these vegies. I’ll let you know what I find!
I’m loving fennel and oranges at the moment and this week I made a recipe for Endive, Fennel and Blood Orange Salad. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
Fruit
- Apples
- Bananas
- Blood orange
- Custard apple
- Cumquat
- Fuji apples
- Grapefruit
- Kiwifruit
- Lemons
- Lime
- Mandarins
- Nashi
- Oranges, navel
- Pomelo
- Rhubarb
- Strawberries
- Tangelos
Vegetables
- Avocadoes
- Beetroot
- Broadbeans
- Broccoli
- Broccolini
- Broccoflower
- Brown onions
- Brussels sprouts
- Cabbage
- Carrots
- Carrots, purple Dutch
- Carrots, Dutch
- Cauliflower
- Celeriac
- Celery
- Chinese greens
- Endive
- English spinach
- Fennel
- Gai lan (Chinese broccoli)
- Garlic
- Ginger
- Jerusalem artichokes
- Kale
- Kohlrabi
- Kumara or sweet potatoes
- Leeks
- Parsnips
- Potateoes
- Pumpkin
- Radicchio
- Silverbeet
- Spinach
- Swede
- Turnips
- Tuscan cabbage (Cavola nero)
- Witlof
Source: Sydney Markets, Perfection Fresh and http://seasonalfoodguide.com
